Kate Winslet is going to be the voice of Black Beauty in Disney Plus’s forthcoming film adaptation of the eponymous book. Personally, I think Winslet will do a lovely horse voice, and I mean that in the kindest way possible.
The film will be a modern take on Anna Sewell’s classic, beginning with the fact that unlike in the original telling, Black Beauty will be female. It’s also moving the plot from England to the American West, in addition to changing…everything else? According to the Hollywood Reporter:
The movie is a contemporary retelling of Anna Sewell’s 19th century novel and tells of the titular horse who is born free in the American West. As she is rounded up and taken away from her family, her story intertwines with that of a teenager, Jo Green, similarly grieving over the loss of her parents. The two develop a bond crafted in love, trust and healing.
As nice as this sounds, I have to say that it also sounds less like a “modern adaptation” and more like a completely different plot from the original. Because my elderly, warped brain long ago lost the details of the story, I turn now to Wikipedia for a refresher:
The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by the titular horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country.
Maybe just a write an entirely new movie? Kate can still be a horse! Or a mongoose! Whatever she wants, really!