Original Live-Action ‘Mulan’ Script Reportedly Starred A White Love Interest. Update: love interest and all other primary roles in the live-action Disney reboot of “Mulan” will be Chinese ― and that Mulan will remain the lead

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In early 2015, Disney announced plans for a live-action reboot of the 1998 animated Disney film “Mulan” after purchasing a spec script from the writing team of Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek. Since then, the anticipated adaptation has sparked concern over potential whitewashing.

On Monday, a startling anonymous article published on the blog Angry Asian Man alleged that the reboot’s original script exemplified the worst fears of many Asian-American readers by inserting a white male character as Mulan’s love interest and the ultimate hero of the script.

This latest report only deepens widespread concerns about how Disney will handle a live-action reboot of a movie with an all-Chinese cast of characters (save, of course, the Huns), a Chinese man as the love interest, and a Chinese woman as its ass-kicking warrior heroine, as evidenced by an outburst of criticism on the Twitter hashtag #MakeMulanRight. Tweeted one, “mulan did not save the whole of china for y’all to make her a secondary character and for her love interest to be white.” An online petition has also circulated urging Disney to “ditch the white savior plot.”

UPDATE: A source close to the project told HuffPost on Monday that the love interest and all other primary roles in the live-action Disney reboot of “Mulan” will be Chinese ― and that Mulan will remain the lead. The source stated that while the spec script was a jumping-off point for the adaptation, the film’s version of the narrative will draw from “The Ballad of Mulan” as well as the 1998 animated film.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mulan-script-white-male-hero_us_57fbda9de4b068ecb5e0c241