Disney Wants To Gender-Flip Your ‘Holes’

A show based off of the hit 2003 Disney movie Holes is coming to Disney+ — and it will be gender-flipped, according to an exclusive report published Tuesday in Variety.

The official logline for the show states:

“In this reimagining of the beloved 1998 book from Louis Sachar, a teenage girl is sent to a detention camp where the ruthless Warden forces the campers to dig holes for a mysterious purpose.”

The original movie, based on Sachar’s Newbery Award-winning novel, launched Shia LaBeouf’s film career as Stanley Yelnats, a teen who is falsely accused of stealing and is sent to Camp Green Lake, a youth prison in Texas, where a vindictive warden forces him and all his other inmates to dig a hole a day.

The new show has been ordered to pilot and would be written and executive produced by Alina Mankin (a writer and producer for Lodge 49) and executive produced by showrunner Liz Phang (a writer and producer for Yellowjackets, The Haunting of Hill House and Locke & Key). The Cabin in the Woods and Bad Times at the El Royale director Drew Goddard would also executive produce.

They have not yet announced a cast for the potential show yet. 

I have many questions.

Will the protagonist have a palindromic name, like in the original book and movie? Maybe Hannah Hannah. Anita Atina. Stanley Yelnats’ name and family lineage were so important to Louis Sachar’s original novel and the 2003 film adaptation. Will this just be the same thing, but with a girl protagonist? Will they name the camp counselor Mrs. Ma’am, instead of Mr. Sir? Is this whole thing just a way to explore more of the warden’s backstory?

I do hope that the show does well if Disney eventually picks it up. The 2003 adaptation is one of the best film adaptations ever. There is a lot more to explore in the story with regards to America’s prison industrial complex and how this country treats juvenile offenders. The new show has a lot to live up to.

But if this show fails, it won’t be because of some #GoWokeGoBroke BS. It will be because Disney+ is not catering its programming to kids; it’s catering its programming to millennial and Gen X parents. Kids have never been the streaming platform’s primary audience.

Skeleton Crew has a distinctly Amblin feel to it, and The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett were always meant to be nostalgia porn for parents instead of an introduction to Star Wars for kids. Agatha All Along, as good as it was, probably wasn’t witching up a lot of kid viewers. 

If the goal for this new show is to introduce Holes to a new generation, there’s no need — the book and the movie are right there. 

But that won’t stop Disney from digging for more.