Wojtek: Poland's 'soldier bear' to be featured in new film by The Snowman animators

The bear is commemorated by a statue in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens, erected in 2015

(Imperial War Museum)

The creators behind The Snowman are working on a new film about Wojtek, a brown bear recruited into the Polish army during World War II.

A Bear Named Wojtek will be a 30-minute, hand-drawn animation, according to The Times; the project is being developed by Ian Harvey, who acted as executive producer on the 1982 television adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman.

Purchased as a young cub from a railway station in Iran by a group of Polish soldiers, Wojtek was enlisted into the army as a private in order to be given rations and transportation. He was subsequently promoted to corporal, and helped to move crates of ammunition during the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944 – swiftly becoming a celebrity among the Allied troops.

After the war, Wojtek lived out the rest of his life at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, and was commemorated by a statue in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens that was erected in 2015.

“It’s fantastic to have a piece of magic that’s real,” Harvey said, adding that he believed the story was “pure fantasy” when it was first told to him by filmmaker Iain Gardner.

Producers have already secured Polish funding and are currently seeking a British partner, with the BBC, Channel 4, and Netflix all possible options.

It is expected that a team of around 30 animators will work on the project for up to a year, with each scene being hand-drawn on a computer tablet. Its release is set to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May, 2020.

Harvey’s Illuminated Film Company were also behind the 2014 BBC adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book On Angel Wings, as well as the children series Little Princess.

Follow Independent Culture on Facebook for all the latest on Film, TV, Music, and more