Since the 1933 original film, King Kong has been both a menace and a secret sweetheart — a giant ape who has repeatedly terrorized New York City and even messed up some dinos and other freaky fare. He’s too big for the small screen, especially the latest iteration, who had to be made even larger so he could believably give Godzilla a what-fer. And yet one streamer is now looking to bring the hairy titan to the small screen.
As per Deadline, Disney Branded Content is in the early stages of developing King Kong (sure to be retitled later), a Disney+ series that will explore the big guy’s origin story. It’s being developed by James Wan’s Atomic Monster, with Paper Girls’ Stephany Folsom writing the scripts. Deadline says it both “brings the classic monster story into the modern age” while also exploring the “mythology of King Kong’s origin story and the supernatural mysteries of his home,” which is a little confusing, since origins stories tend to be set in the past.
This won’t be the first time Kong has made it to the small screen, though previous efforts have been animated. This will be live-action, and it will presumably feature the current version of the character, who debuted in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, which was made in part so he could be absorbed into Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse and duke it out with Godzilla.
This new show will presumably answer some burning questions, like: How did he get so big? Are there other apes of such magnitude? If not, did they die? And why does he have a thing for tiny human women? Whatever the case, let’s hope it’s a mite better than this instantly forgotten straight-to-VHS cartoon movie released the same year as the 1998 remake of the Kong sorta-knock-off Mighty Joe Young.
(Via Deadline)
