What has become of Walden Media?

Walden Media, the movie production company created by Christian billionaire Philip Anschutz for the express purpose of making “inherently educational” movies and “faithful film adaptations of great literature” (or so their home page says), had another flop this weekend. It seems How to Eat Fried Worms will rank 11th or 12th for the weekend, once the final figures are in — meaning, in other words, that it failed to even crack the top ten.

This comes less than four months after the flop that was Hoot. I thought Hoot was worse as a film, but my colleague Steven D. Greydanus says Fried Worms is the worse film, partly because it was based on a good book, which Hoot was not, yet nearly everything in the original book was tossed aside. (I have not read either of these books myself.) In other words, this adaptation of Fried Worms is not the sort of “faithful film adaptation” that Walden has supposedly committed itself to making.

And immediately before either of these films, there was Walden’s surprisingly disappointing — and surprisingly loose — adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), which I’ve commented on here before.

There is little else in Walden’s roster to date that inspires any confidence in the company’s future output. I did like Because of Winn-Dixie (2005; my junket report; my review) — a film that did closely resemble the book on which it was based — but the Jackie Chan version of Around the World in 80 Days (2004) was embarrassingly bad, I Am David (2003; my review) was so-so at best, and I never understood all the fuss over Holes (2003).

Looking ahead, what do we see? A farting cow in Charlotte’s Web, gratuitous and counter-productive special effects in Bridge to Terabithia, another puffed-up revisionistic Narnia story in Prince Caspian, and who knows what else. Remind me, what exactly do the words “faithful film adaptations” mean, again?

To be fair, Walden’s abolitionist biopic Amazing Grace — which, AFAIK, is not based on a children’s book — is slated to close the Toronto film festival in a few weeks. So maybe there is something of quality coming out of this company after all. But not enough. If I were a teacher or a school librarian, I’d be shying away from these guys, and possibly even lobbying against them.