If you’re tired of the never-ending search for streaming content that feels fresh and relevant, award-winning actor and New Mobility contributor Regan Linton hopes you will tune in to her modern update of Jack and the Beanstalk, now streaming on Max. The 19-minute film, directed and co-written by Linton, is one of six shorts that make up Reframed: Next Gen Narratives, a new series from Warner Bros. Discovery Access that tackles modern issues through remakes of classic films.  

Linton’s film is an update of 1952 Abbott and Costello movie Jack and the Beanstalk, and is filled with clever twists on the familiar tropes of the fairy tale. Her Jack, played by Josh Elledge, is an underappreciated neurodivergent grocery store worker who is denied a living wage, and must find the boldness to push for what is right.  

“From my very first pitch, I had the idea of a worker who kind of pushes back against a more metaphorical giant,” says Linton. “I knew I wanted it to be about employment, just because that feels like such a salient issue for our community. As I kept developing it, I became more and more aware of the subminimum wage issue, and we amplified that a little bit more. 

“I was passionate about trying to get into the narratives that I feel like we don’t see about the disability community,” she says. “I was just hoping that I wasn’t out of my mind in thinking that I was doing something that felt innovative.” 

Linton was one of six emergent directors selected to helm the shorts after a lengthy process of nominations, applications and pitches. While the other shorts filmed in Hollywood, Linton fought to film in her native Denver and use local disabled talent to center disability issues.  

In addition to Elledge, the film features wheelchair users Stewart Tucker Lundy and Kalyn Rose Heffernan, and music by Heffernan’s band, Wheelchair Sports Camp. “The studio wanted us to go through proposing different actors and I kind of told them, ‘No, these are the people that I want, because I knew that I wanted to use the folks that I thought had the potential for these different roles,” she says. “[The studio] eventually came around.” 

Linton hopes the film’s focus on people with disabilities being paid a subminimum wage motivates viewers to take action. Advocates have been working hard to get Congress to end subminimum wage practices by passing the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act. You can submit comments in support of the bill until Jan. 16. 

Impact aside, Linton is excited to have her vision out in the public. “It was a really amazing process, and I hope it will help people get ideas for how our community can be represented in different ways, and not just see us as the people thrown into the side as set-dressing,” she says. 

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