Theme: Free For All
Culturally speaking, if it's really old, it goes on sale.
The theme for this month is Free For All and the idea comes from a little known podcast with a host that tends to kick-start big things.
In a recent episode they discussed a reimagining of Peter Pan, as one of the many embodiments of the Celtic trickster god. This merging of Celtic mythology and the now public domain, Peter Pan, sounded fascinating.
It got me thinking, what other works are now public domain?
What other stories could we retell and reimagine for an audience that already knows and loves them?
Paul, they made a joke about a Cyber Punk Peter Pan that’s all gritty and everyone dies. Guess what? It’s too good for me to pass up.
So I’ve done a little research and found a list of works that I think are delicious works to sink our teeth into, and reimagine them with new twists, in new genres or otherwise stamping our own incredible mark on them.
A word of warning, I’m not a lawyer, the websites I use and I will source them in each prompt say they’re public domain, but the final decision and ass on the line is yours. So triple check, just in case.
Avoid stuff that comes from the Disney reimagining.
Use the original as inspiration. So, for example, Wizard of Oz, those ruby slippers are from the much newer remake. They changed the original sliver slippers to ruby to show off how much new colour, and especially red popped on the screen.
Why would you want to do this?
Why not just make up your own characters and worlds? Well, these worlds come with an audience, they come with people that already know and love the characters, and often they have an expanded world that people don’t know the full details of. Seemingly small, forgotten details can become big parts of your story.
Also, this happened and made millions (less than the budget). But hey, it still got made into a movie!:
Each week I'll give you a choice between two public domain works to take inspiration from and to reinvent and reimagine as hard as you can.
Let's take a classic and add fluffy dice!
