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Dora and the lost city of gold tico8/8/2023 ![]() ![]() After almost 20 years on the air, it's no wonder Dora the Explorer finally got picked for the live-action movie treatment. Director James Bobin and screenwriter Nicholas Stoller, who previously worked together on 2011's The Muppets, have reunited to bring Dora's story to the silver screen. Since then, the pair have spent many episodes going on new adventures and teaching an important lesson or two along the way. Young explorer Dora and her trusty simian companion Boots were first introduced in 2000 when Dora the Explorer debuted on Nickelodeon. ![]() ![]() This is the first time Dora's big adventures have been translated into a feature film, which means lots of characters from the cartoon have made their way into live-action in this new adaptation. But, it needs YOUR help to ensure a decent post-theatrical lifespan.The Dora and the Lost City of Gold cast has a number of well-known and some lesser-known actors and actresses, all of whom attempt to bring an adaptation of the hit Nickelodeon cartoon Dora the Explorer to life on the big screen. It earned an okay $118 million worldwide (including a leggy $67m domestic from a $14m launch) on a $48m budget. It was one of the best big studio releases from last year and she was a big reason why. By the way, Moner is the real deal and I'm begging all of you to rent Instant Family when you get a chance. And if Paramount and friends can craft a halfway decent adventure movie for kids that happens to be a Dora the Explorer movie, well, then they might just have something.Ĭome what may, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, starring (deep breath) Isabela Moner, Benicio del Toro, Eva Longoria, Temuera Morrison, Michael Pena, Q'orianka Kilcher and Eugenio Derbez, opens Augalongside Universal/Comcast's Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw and (barring a premiere on Disney+ or Hulu) Fox's The New Mutants. Yes, Dora the Explorer is a hugely popular property, one that (like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) gets new fans right as the current generation outgrows it. That being said, if this movie is going to work beyond kitsch value, the best thing director James Bobin (who directed The Muppets) and writer Nicholas Stoller (who wrote The Muppets) can do is craft a kid-friendly adventure movie that just happens to feature an iconic IP and various fantasy elements (like a talking monkey named Boots and an emotionally needy klepto fox) tied to the brand. All of that being said, it would be deeply ironic and somewhat appropriate if the closest thing we got to a National Treasure 3 (and I consider Tomb Raider to be closer to the run-and-gun Indiana Jones movies) came courtesy of a live-action adaptation of a beloved cartoon aimed at preschoolers. Yet despite the real-world setting and adult-skewing cast (Cage! Jon Voight! Harvey Keitel!), it was a PG-rated and wholly family-friendly adventure, somewhat representing a blurring of the lines that would define the next decade of mainstream Hollywood cinema. The Nicolas Cage caper was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, a man whose mid-1980's and late-1990's output basically defined the adult-skewing blockbuster in the wake of Star Wars and Batman respectively. The Nicolas Cage franchise always seemed to represent the moment where Hollywood started to stop making "kids films" and "adult films" and instead made mostly "for all ages" would-be blockbusters with hopes of worldwide global grosses. I was always surprised that we never got a third National Treasure, as Book of Secrets earned $220m domestic from a $44m launch in Christmas of 2007 and grossed a whopping $457m worldwide on a $130m budget. Those films were old-school exploratory adventures that were also PG-rated thrillers with almost no real violence. The hope is that Paramount and Nickelodeon use the property and its kid-friendly appeal to craft something akin to the National Treasure movies. Yes, getting more female baddies like Cate Blanchett's Hela in Thor: Ragnarok is also a step in the right direction if you know what I mean. Some of that is just the source material (or characters in the MCU who had already been established when Disney bought Marvel and took over the MCU from Paramount, but every little bit helps in terms of pushing a given biggie to the forefront of pop culture. Jordan's Killmonger, etc.) that play hard to the female gaze. Think the social media-friendly villains for Star Wars (Adam Driver's Kylo Ren) and the MCU (Tom Hiddleston's Loki, Michael B.
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