Sergei Makovetsky (left) plays the Prince in the new fairy tale. Photo: Still from the film “Gorynych”
After the incredible success of the film “Cheburashka” (6+), which grossed 6.7 billion rubles at the box office, literally everyone is inventing fairy tales. Producers are churning out family films, hoping to make money on nostalgia and the viewer’s pure love for the masterpieces of Soviet cinema and cartoons. Here are just five fairy tale films that we will be watching in the foreseeable future (and there are at least ten more films in the pipeline!).
“Gorynych”
The producer of Alexei Balabanov’s films, Sergei Selyanov, with his film company STV, has already eaten more than one dog in fairy tales: he has released highly successful franchises about Alyosha Popovich and Dobrynya Nikitich, filmed the adventures of Ivan Tsarevich and the fairy tale about Emelya with Nikita Kologriv in the title role. And now he has taken on Zmey Gorynych, adding a militaristic background to the children’s epic. At first, the film was supposed to be directed by Alexander Voitinsky (“At the Command of the Pike” and “Flint”). However, in the end, the director was transferred to the post of creative producer, and the project is directed by Dmitry Khonin, who recently made the successful series “About People and About War.”
The main character of “Gorynych” is also a military man. More precisely, a sailor. Navy lieutenant Alexey Alekhin (Alexander Petrov) descends in a submarine to the bottom of the Baltic Sea, where a huge monster takes him back to ancient times: there he meets a baby dragon left without a mother, whom he takes under his wing. How to train a dragon in the Moby Dick universe? Add a lot of music.
“These are my reworked naval memories,” explains the author of the script and songs for the film, Alexander Arkhipov. – I remember that once the destroyer Bespokoiny was next to us. I imagine that 25 years later the first shots of this film would have been filmed in “Restless”?
“Ruslan and Lyudmila”
Producers, as expected, hire young artists who shone in the most successful and memorable series of the last decade, “The Boy’s Word.” Blood on the Asphalt.” The guys who were unknown to many at the beginning of last year are now in high demand. For example, Ruzil Minekaev got to play the role of Ruslan in the film adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” by director Egor Chichkanov (“Hello Again!”).
After The Child’s Word, 25-year-old Ruzil Minekaev moved on to fairy tales. Photo: Ruzil Minekaev’s personal page on the social network.
“Pushkin’s irony, humour, impudence and even audacity that permeate the text resonate with me,” explains the director. – And I want to approach the film adaptation of this work with these keys in hand. Don’t be afraid of unexpected twists and interpretations and bravely look at this love story as if it were being told for the first time, and do it in the modern cinematic language.
A new film based on Pushkin’s fairy tale is due to be released in 2027, with a budget of 800 million rubles so far.
BY THE WAY
Ruzil Minekaev will simultaneously star in another fairy-tale film – Fyodor Bondarchuk’s “Pinocchio”. The young artist will play the role of Harlequin.
“Scarlet flower”
In addition to the famous cartoon, a film adaptation of Sergei Aksakov’s fairy tale “The Scarlet Flower” was also released in the USSR.
It is not yet known who will replace Lev Durov in the role of a businessman and father of three daughters in the new film adaptation. Photo: Still from the film “The Scarlet Flower”, 1978.
In 1977, Irina Povolotskaya made a film adaptation in which the best artists of the country starred: Alexander Abdulov, Lev Durov, Alla Demidova and others.
Almost half a century later, another director is taking up the fairy tale: Yulia Trofimova, whose drama Country Sasha was included in the program of the Berlin Film Festival.
In the new film adaptation, the emphasis will shift from the adventurous journey in search of gifts to the socio-psychological context. After all, this is very fashionable in the era of the trauma cult (see the film “Joker”) and the hegemony of psychologists.
The story, written “from the words of the housekeeper Pelagia”, will deal not only with the relationship between the merchant’s daughter Nastenka and the monster, but also with the evil witch and the king, the father of this monster (yes, yes, all our psychotraumas from childhood!). Thus we will see that there is not only bright and pure love, like Nastenka’s, but also toxic, abusive, like that of a witch who tries to destroy the Scarlet Flower.
Filming is scheduled for 2026.
“Baba Yaga saves the New Year”
Lyudmila Artemyeva fits very organically into the image of Baba Yaga. Photo: Still from the film “Baba Yaga Saves the World”, 2023.
The name is reminiscent of one of the TNT projects with which the channel saturates the New Year holidays. But no, there is no need to panic – the film is being made by other people. This is a continuation of the fairy tale “Baba Yaga Saves the World” in 2023, where Lyudmila Artemyeva talentedly played the role of a grumpy, big-nosed sorceress in deep old-age makeup. The heroine is not at all negative, as the name suggests. Quite the opposite: in the second part of the family comedy, the Snow Queen (Yulia Takshina) is the villain, who breaks out of icy captivity and steals a magic artifact from Santa Claus (Sergei Nikonenko) in order to take revenge and harm everyone around him. The sorceress kidnaps the boy Yura (Alexey Sokhin), after which his father, scientist Andrei (Evgeniy Mikheev) and kind Yaga enter the fight for the child.
Olesya Zheleznyak (Kikimora), Glafira Tarkhanova (Marya the Mistress) and Yan Tsapnik (Ivan Tsarevich) will return to their roles.
“Kingdom of crooked mirrors”
The author of the country’s most ambitious and highest-grossing projects, Klim Shipenko (“Slave”, “Challenge”), also did not miss this cup. He will have to translate the fairy tale about Olya and Yalo, written by Soviet journalist Vitaly Gubarev, into modern film language. As soon as Shipenko finishes filming the third part of “Slave”, he will immediately start filming “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors”.
In the original, the roles of Olya and Yalo were played by twins Olga and Tatyana Yukina; modern technologies will allow one actress to do this. Photo: Still from the film “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors”, 1963.
Gubarev’s story was published in 1951 and in 1963 it was filmed by the great Alexander Rowe; most viewers remember the fairy tale from that film. According to the plot, the capricious pioneer Olya finds herself in a magical land on the other side of the mirror, where she meets a reflection – the girl Yalo. Together they oppose the king’s tyranny and class inequality, in which the rich oppress the poor and specially made crooked mirrors distort reality (like Orwell’s dystopia “1984”). The worst thing is that in that world (capitalism) evil is presented as good, stupidity as intelligence, lies as truth.
The film is currently in pre-production, meaning we won’t be able to see it on big screens until 2025-2026.
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