More on the new style Famous Five

I mentioned recently the new Disney version of the Famous Five. This week in the Guardian, Lucy Mangan devotes her whole column to it: Five fall into the abyss.

Son (and daughter) of the Famous Five

I've blogged before about the reimagining of Enid Blyton's Famous Five but I wasn't quite prepared for this, from The Times:

Blyton’s characters are being revived in a series of books, accompanied by an animated television series, screened on the Disney Channel. They still stop for lashings of ginger beer and are accompanied by their faithful dog, still called Timmy, but much has changed since the quintet first investigated Treasure Island in 1942.

Famous Five: On the Case introduces the children of Blyton’s original adventurers. Rumours that George nurtured sapphic tendencies proved wide of the mark. Her Anglo-Indian daughter Jo, short for Jyoti (Hindi for “light”), is the new team leader.

Wimpish Anne became a successful California art dealer and produced Allie, a shopping-obsessed Malibu girl who shares her mother’s disdain for dangerous antics. Dick’s son, Dylan, peruses the Japanese stock market for opportunities to make a quick yen.

The five — now with wireless laptop — are packed off to the Devon moors and are soon on the trail of smugglers. But they encounter a most sinister threat on their first adventure. A phoney environmentalist is running a DVD bootlegging operation from Shelter Island — just the kind of activity that is threatening Disney’s profits.

Our heroes discover that the DVDs are embedded with subliminal messages that brainwash children into craving Fudge Fries candy. The villain is brought to book.

Read the rest of the article and the (mostly up in arms) comments here.

Famous Five, relaunch and Blyton spin-off titles

I've already blogged about The Famous Five - how they are being made into a Disney cartoon and more recently about a show starring the grown-up Famous Five. Chorion who own the rights have even bigger plans, both tv and book-wise. Taken from an article in The Bookseller Daily at Frankfurt:

The Famous Five titles will be reborn as a 26-part series, and a mass of novelisations and tie-ins are planned. Chorion has also recruited the creative packager Working Partners to extend the Wishing Chair series of books, and is working with authors on a spin-off series based on The Faraway Tree’s Sylkie the fairy, and classic boarding school series St Clare’s. “Our objective is to make Blyton frontlist again,” says Norton’s deputy, Esra Cafer.

The company is also taking the proven St Clare’s formula to a new realm, with Mermaids of Glimmer Reef—a boarding school series set under the sea and inspired by a mermaid character in another of Blyton’s 8,000 stories. “We’ve looked deep within the Blyton portfolio and this is a true spin-off. It’s a completely new world, but using one of Blyton’s creations,” says Norton.

He argues these ambitious launches satisfy a need for “wholesome” books, as an alternative to the series that deal with adult themes. “There is a lot of age compression in the market,” says Norton. “A lot of the [Blyton] projects really are the best of both worlds. They are safe and value-driven, and they have a modern voice . . . I believe we can put an additional one million books a year into the hands of both fans and new readers.”

Blyton's Famous 5 - all grown up and on the tv

From Digital Spy

Enid Blyton's notorious Famous Five books are to be turned into a TV series, with characters Julian, Dick, Anne and George as middle-aged men and women.

The last book about the crime-fighting children was written in 1963 and now producers want to show them grown up in a new drama that has been authorised by Blyton's estate.

Independent production company Twofour will develop the series, which will show the characters aged between 40 and 50. Having gone their separate ways, they are reunited to fight a new crime.

A source told The Times: "They would all be in middle age, perhaps some of them would be going through midlife crises.

"It will be interesting to see whether the characters have grown up to be like they were when they were children. Would George, the tomboyish one, now be glamorous and have lots of children? Would Anne, the sensible one, be dysfunctional?”

UPDATE More on this story on the BBC website.

Famous Five to be cartoonised

Today's Telegraph reports that:

"Enid Blyton's Famous Five adventures are being turned into a Disney cartoon series.

A British company, Chorion, is working with a French animation firm to make the series which will première in the UK in 2008.

A spokesman said the series was still popular around the world and every generation of children "deserved" to be entertained by the Famous Five.

The Famous Five children (and dog) are, aside from Noddy, perhaps the most famous of Blyton's characters.

Julian, Dick, Anne and George, with their dog Timmy, typically used their school holidays to chance upon a mystery which led to a chase and adventure.

It might mean scrambling through caves and smugglers' tunnels or exploring a remote island to unmask criminals in their work.

Whatever the obstacles, the team always found time to stop for a picnic which would typically include ginger beer.

Indeed, if the term "lashings of ginger beer" has become a catch-phrase for mocking Blyton's characters, they have delighted generations with their courage and sense of fair play.

A spokesman for Chorion told the Daily Telegraph the cartoon characters would not use old-fashioned terminology, but the adventures would remain true."

Full article here.

Let's hope the figures look better than those on the recent covers of the Secret Seven series: