A few weeks ago, Toronto production company Breakthrough Entertainment added to its website a page for its upcoming adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. Initially announced as a thirteen-episode series, this ninety-minute telefilm will be directed by John Kent Harrison from a script by Susan Coyne:
Based on the globally beloved classic children’s novel that was first published in 1908 by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables is the story of a fiercely imaginative little girl who, with her irrepressible spirit, touches the lives of everyone that she meets. In particular, it is the story of Anne’s stormy relationship with the strait-laced Marilla Cuthbert who discovers through Anne a capacity for love that she never knew she had.
Details about casting, filming locations, and possible release dates are not yet available but will be posted here once they are confirmed.
So I don’t know anything about the people making it. Are we happy about this or leery?
Adaptation is a form of interpretation, and each screen version of Anne of Green Gables has expressed the vision of the people making it. Although I’m disappointed that this production will be a ninety-minute movie instead of an ongoing series, I’m looking forward to seeing how this particular group of people will reimagine the story and the characters for the twenty-first century.