Maybe it’s just my age, but two of my favorite things when I was a kid were Charlie Brown and Winnie the Pooh. Disney already took a baseball bat to the cast of Winnie the Pooh. They turned this:
Into this
And made Winnie the Pooh essentially indistinguishable from the Care Bears.
Now Fox is getting ready to do the same thing to Charlie Brown and the cast of Peanuts. Like Winnie the Pooh, part of the charm of Peanuts was in its simplicity; the simplicity of the stories and the simplicity of the characters. The animation style of both franchises worked well because it matched that style.
Charlie Brown in 3D CGI completely destroys the ethos of Charles Shultz’s creation, before a word of dialogue has been spoken.
Unfortunately, they will probably make money on the deal. Charlie Brown in 3D CGI though has all the integrity and appeal of auto-tuning Louis Armstrong so that his voice doesn’t sound so gravelly or colorizing Casablanca.
Sometimes it is the very imperfections and lack of modernity that you are “correcting” that gave things their enduring appeal.
Here is a taste of Fox’s vision for Charlie Brown: