Disney's New Fantasy Adaptation Based On 11-Book Series Is An Apology 6 Years In The Making

Published Oct 12, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While Disney does have an existing movie adaptation of one of the most iconic fantasy book series of the 2000s, their upcoming series is set to finally make up for this disastrous misstep six years later. As anyone who has had the mixed fortunes of running through this actor/director’s back catalog can reassure the reader, there are few creators with a less consistent track record than Kenneth Branagh. To be clear, this is no straightforward insult to his oeuvre. Not only has Branagh directed some widely beloved blockbusters like 2011’s Thor and 2015’s live-action Cinderella remake, but he has also been behind the camera on some of the best big-screen Shakespeare adaptations. For this writer’s money, Branagh’s Hamlet remains the best screen version of the play, while Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice captures Agatha Christie’s iconic Hercule Poirot better than most screen adaptations. However, that very example provides a perfect counterpoint. While Branagh’s third Poirot movie, A Haunting in Venice, is great, his first, Murder on the Orient Express, falls into the same trap as many 2010s Christie adaptations as it is too dourly self-serious for its own good. Similarly, while his starry upcoming psychological thriller The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde sounds promising, there is no denying that Branagh’s 2020 Artemis Fowl was such a disaster that Disney’s new TV show will effectively be an apology for the adaptation. Disney's New Artemis Fowl Series Is An Apology For The 2020 Movie Author Eoin Colfer penned the children’s fantasy novel Artemis Fowl back in 2001, and a whopping seven sequels followed the tremendously successful original bestseller’s release. A second cycle of novels, The Fowl Twins, added another three books to the series between 2019 and 2021, and Colfer’s consistently superb sales saw the books become one of the best-selling series of all time during this era. Since Disney’s Percy Jacksons & The Olympians is one of the streaming service’s most impressive high-profile hits, it might seem strange to the uninitiated that an animated TV series based on the Artemis Fowl books took this long to enter production. However, this is largely because of the tortured production process and subsequent disastrous failure of Artemis Fowl’s live-action adaptation, which was released to critical mockery in 2020. Plans for an Artemis Fowl movie began way back in 2001, and at various points, Jim Sheridan was attached as a director, Saoirse Ronan was attached to stay, and Robert De Niro was ostensibly meant to executive produce. Not only did none of this come to pass, but the eventual Disney+ movie version of Artemis Fowl was delayed extensively due to Harvey Weinstein’s removal from Miramax and, later, the COVID-19 pandemic. The Key Lessons Disney's Artemis Fowl Series Must Learn From The Movie Image via MovieStillsDB While these factors were beyond the control of the creators, ultimately, the failure of the movie couldn’t be blamed on its lengthy production and messy release. Artemis Fowl completely rewrote its amoral title character, turning him into a straightforward hero instead of a complex anti-villain. By extension, this unwise change necessarily turned the book’s true protagonist, Holly Short, into a glorified sidekick. There were controversies over casting, insensitive tropes and stereotypes, and massive missing segments from the source novel. All of this might have been overlooked by particularly generous viewers if the movie was watchable, but Artemis Fowl was also dull, slow, unfunny, cheap-looking, and bland. Thus, the Artemis Fowl TV series will have to do more than just accurately adapt the books if the screen potential of the beloved novel series is to be redeemed. Artemis Fowl’s TV show needs to be as entertaining as the source novels and as fresh and inventive as Colfer’s fantasy world felt for readers 25 years ago, as well as sticking at least relatively close to the book’s story and characters. Release Date June 12, 2020 Runtime 115 Minutes Director Kenneth Branagh Writers Eoin Colfer, Michael Goldenberg, Adam Kline, Conor McPherson