Reese Witherspoon is developing a modernized take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears featuring a strong female protagonist. Witherspoon is an actress who began performing as a teenager, eventually making her breakthrough in the steamy teen movie Cruel Intentions opposite Ryan Philippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Since then, she went on to star in a variety of comedies including Sweet Home Alabama, Legally Blonde, and its sequel Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, in addition to dramas including Water for Elephants and the hit HBO series Big Little Lies. Over the years she has been nominated for several prestigious awards, taking home an Oscar for playing June Carter-Cash in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and an Emmy for her role in Big Little Lies season 1.
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Although she is best known as an actress, in recent years Witherspoon has expanded her brand to include a production company called Sunshine Entertainment and a popular book club, modeled after Oprah. As a producer, she has largely focused on literary adaptations with strong female leads, including 2014's Wild and Gone Girl, the 2020 miniseries Little Fires Everywhere, and this year's Where the Crawdads Sing. Her upcoming projects include an adaptation of the Liane Moriarty novel Truly Madly Guilty and a live-action Tinker Bell film, in addition to producing and starring in the upcoming Legally Blonde 3.
In a recent press release, Sunshine Entertainment announced that they would be partnering with Build-A-Bear Entertainment for a new film project. The film will be an adaptation of the British fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which was originally published in 1837. The story, which follows a young woman going into the home of Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear to sample their porridge, chairs, and beds and find which are most to her liking, will be a modernized, animated retelling featuring a strong female lead.
The History of Goldilocks Adaptations
Although Goldilocks is an iconic tale in Western literature, this will be the first time it has been adapted into a feature film. Typically, it has been adapted or parodied in animated shorts or episodes of fairy tale anthology series, including Looney Tunes, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, and Fractured Fairy Tales. However, the tale has also been adapted into more long-running series like Disney Junior's Goldie & Bear and live-action adaptation where she was played by Tatum O'Neil in an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre.
One of the reasons that Goldilocks and the Three Bears hasn't been adapted into a feature before is likely the simplicity of the story. Goldilocks typically doesn't interact with any other characters until the bears return at the very end and she escapes out the window, which would require a large narrative punch-up to make into a longform project. However, by refocusing the narrative around Goldilocks as a more complex character, the film will likely be adding many elements to the world around her that will help add depth and detail to the story.