Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | June 24, 2026
It’s time for Hollywood’s favourite game. Let’s spin the mystical reboot wheel and see what we land on today! How about a ’90s nostalgic fave with just enough name recognition to make millennials have feelings, but nothing so expensive that the studio would bankrupt itself to acquire it? Step forward The Magic School Bus, the edutainment favourite for those who liked learning, adventure, and animated lesbian icons.
Legendary has acquired the rights to a Magic School Bus movie, and they’ve cast Elizabeth Banks in the role of Ms. Frizzle. She’s been circling this role for years now, ever since the project was first announced by Universal in 2020. Rob Letterman, director of the Goosebumps movie and Detective Pikachu, is on board to write and direct, which seems like the most sensible decision possible. Mark Platt is one of the producers attached to the project.
For you young ones, The Magic School Bus was a series of books by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen that was adapted into a cartoon for PBS. It taught kids all about the wonders of science, accompanied by a banging theme tune by Little Richard and a ridiculously star-filled guest cast that included the likes of Eartha Kitt, Dolly Parton, and Rita Moreno. Netflix revived it in 2014, with Kate McKinnon in the lead role and Lin-Manuel Miranda on theme song duties.
The whole point of the show was to educate kids in a non-patronising and colourful way. How does that work as a movie? Or do they just turn it into yet another vaguely meta, CGI-heavy action-adventure that’s technically for a family audience but mostly trying to lure in 30-somethings who had a lot of feelings about Lily Tomlin? Or, horror of horrors, they make it into something dark or a weird origin story for the bus’s tragic past? Watch it cost $300 million and lose on its opening weekend to a YouTuber’s movie.
