Disney's Alice Returns To Wonderland...And Is Running A Bakery!

Walt Disney Co. DIS is reimagining its 1951 film classic “Alice in Wonderland” as a CGI-animated television series for preschoolers — except that this production will have more in common with "Cake Wars" than Lewis Carroll.

What Happened: The new “Alice’s Wonderland Bakery” will have the plucky eponymous heroine running her own pastry-focused business. Many of the characters of “Alice in Wonderland” will return for the ensemble and new characters are being added, including Cookie the cookbook — a talking recipe text that serves as Alice’s confidant — and Dinah the cat, the feline sidekick to this newly entrepreneurial Alice.

Each episode of the new series consists of two 11-minute stories centering on recipe-inspired adventures featuring what Disney describes as "whimsical cakes and treats for friends and neighbors with enchanted kitchen tools and ingredients to help them." Musical numbers are sprinkled throughout the show.

The company added the new series "celebrates the culture and creativity of food, highlights self-expression, and imparts age-appropriate social and emotional lessons about friendship, collaboration, and the importance of community."

Thirteen-year-old Libby Rue will provide the voice of Alice, with comic and former talk show host Craig Ferguson as Doorknob and “Scrubs” actor Donald Faison as Harry the March Hare.

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Why It Matters: The company has a very long history with “Alice in Wonderland.”

In 1923, Walt Disney produced the short film “Alice’s Wonderland” that mixed live-action footage of a child actress with animated characters. The short led to a series of films known as the Alice Comedies that had a live-action girl in wacky adventures with cartoon figures.

Disney had hoped to revive the mix of live-action and animation in the 1930s with a feature film version of “Alice in Wonderland,” but he instead pursued “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Disney toyed with the project through the 1940s before deciding to embark on a fully animated feature — only to discover that British filmmaker Dallas Bower was creating a feature film of the Carroll classic using stop-motion puppet animation. Disney sued to restrict the release of the Bower film, but that heavy-handed action coupled with mixed-to-negative reviews over Disney's adaptation created a publicity problem for the studio, and the 1951 film was a commercial failure.

“Alice in Wonderland” received new appreciation in the 1970s, first as a popular staple of college campus film screening clubs and then in a theatrical re-release that helped recoup its initial financial losses. Today, it's considered among the classics of Disney’s golden age of films.

“Alice’s Wonderland Bakery” will premiere on Feb. 9 at 1:30 p.m. ET on Disney Junior and Disney Channel, and the first several episodes will be available on the Disney+ streaming service.

Photo: Disney