Three Little Pigs - Subsequent Retellings

Subsequent Retellings

In 1985, Faerie Tale Theatre recreated The Three Little Pigs, starring Jeff Goldblum as The Wolf, and Billy Crystal, Stephen Furst, and Fred Willard as the pigs.

The 1989 parody, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, is presented as a first-person narrative by the wolf, who portrays the entire incident as a misunderstanding; he had gone to the pigs to borrow some sugar, had destroyed their houses in a sneezing fit, ate the first two pigs to not waste food (since they'd died in the house collapse anyway), and was caught attacking the third pig's house after the pig had continually insulted him.

The 1992 Green Jellÿ song, Three Little Pigs (and its claymation music video) sets the story in Los Angeles. The wolf drives a Harley Davidson motorcycle, the first little pig is an aspiring guitarist, the second is a cannabis smoking, dumpster diving evangelist and the third holds a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University. In the end, with all three pigs barricaded in the brick house, the third pig calls 911. John Rambo is dispatched to the scene, and kills the wolf with a machine gun.

The 1993 children's book The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig inverts the cast and makes a few changes to the plot: the wolves build a brick house, then a concrete house, then a steel house, and finally a house of flowers. The pig is unable to blow the houses down, destroying them by other means, but eventually gives up his wicked ways when he smells the scent of the flower house, and becomes friends with the wolf.

In an advert in the British newspaper The Guardian, the aftermath of the Three Little Pigs tale is told in the style of modern news media coverage, including social media reaction and the sociopolitical consequences of the story. This retelling eventually reveals the pigs to be attempting insurance fraud by blaming the wolf, who had asthma, for blowing their houses down.