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Modern Hollywood has been chasing a big trend for decades now, adapting shows and movies from animation and realizing them in live-action. Though this may seem like a relatively recent trend, it’s been happening for years (’90s hits like The Flintstones and Casper come to mind). Netflix has slowly been making this a key part of its content plans, and the truth is that it’s working. One of the biggest hits on the streaming platform is Wednesday, the live-action reboot of The Addams Family, plus they’re poised to follow through with a live-action Scooby-Doo series next year.
Disney has turned this style of adaptation into a cottage industry, with billion-dollar hits that follow the trend like Lilo & Stitch & The Lion King. Now, another live-action remake of a property has been confirmed by the House of Mouse, and ironically, it’s one that was already brought to life at Netflix as an animated series. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney+ and Disney Channel have ordered a pilot for a live-action series based on Max Brallier’s The Last Kids on Earth, with The Vampire Diaries scribes Chad Fiveash and James Stoteraux set to write the pilot and serve as showrunners, with Kevin Tancharoen (Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD) tapped to direct.
Live-Action The Last Kids on Earth Heads to Disney+
The Last Kids on Earth was first published in 2015, written by author Max Brallier and illustrated by Douglas Holgate, telling the story of thirteen-year-old orphan Jack Sullivan, who battles monsters and a zombie outbreak alongside his friends in his hometown, Wakefield, Massachusetts. A New York Times Best Seller, the series has evolved over the years and now includes ten books in the series, an interactive Survival Guide, three standalone books, and even a full graphic novel adaptation.
That evolution that The Last Kids on Earth has had since its initial publication is what gives this new live-action reboot of the property the chance to really carry on for years, with enough material for it to run at least ten seasons if the story is structured to faithfully adapt the narratives of each book (and that’s not counting the other spinoffs).
Netflix’s previous adaptation of The Last Kids on Earth, an animated series, managed to deliver three seasons for fans (plus a special episode afterward), adapting some of the stories from the books but leaving quite a few of them on the table. As a result, young readers who have read the entire The Last Kids on Earth series now have the opportunity to see the full story brought to life in live-action.
There’s one problem, though, with the longevity that a The Last Kids on Earth live-action TV series could have, and it’s one that comes for us all: Time. As any Stranger Things fan will be able to tell you, young actors grow up fast, and if the series manages to become a success over time, it will need to move quickly to get the stories told before the stars at the center of it all get too old to fit the label of “kids.”
This is all, of course, assuming that The Last Kids on Earth live-action series makes it past the pilot stage. Disney has very strategically only ordered the first episode of the show, going back to the traditional television structure of seeing if the series actually works before ordering any more. That first episode will be a test in more ways than one, as the time between the filming of the pilot and the rest of the series could be a time when one or more of the stars hit a growth spurt and look and sound totally different.
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