By Yep, the fairy tale fad keeps on letting hair fall out the window of the money tower that is Hollywood. Even though Alice in Wonderland was mostly despised, it still went on to be the second highest domestic earner of 2010, bested only by Toy Story 3, and was arguably given free costume and art awards by default. When a movie like that can earn over one billion dollars worldwide, you can be sure others in the industry are desperately trying to repeat its success.
The next fairy tale stepping up to pull the sword from the stone is Sleeping Beauty, with the script calling for Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) to play a princess exploring her own dream world and trying to find a way out instead of waiting for the prince to do all of the work. Since that may not interest you after having seen Sucker Punch, Deadline has a nice summary of other blatant cashing-in attempts that are in the works:
“There is already a version of Sleeping Beauty at Disney called Maleficent, which is being scripted by Linda Woolverton, with Tim Burton attached and rumors that Angelina Jolie coveted for the title role of the witch. There is also Snow White and the Hunstman at Universal with Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron, and The Brothers Grimm: Snow White at Relativity with Julia Roberts and Armie Hammer; Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters at Paramount with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton; a revisionist take on Peter Pan with Channing Tatum at Sony Pictures; and Disney’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, the Sam Raimi-directed film that will star James Franco.”
Part of me thinks that the masses are getting bored with the genre reboot, and that it’s going to be a short lived musical chairs or hot potato game where one film will eventually take a huge hit in viewers and profits, with Kramer-ific voices changing from “Buy!” to “Sell! Sell! Sell!” Then again, X-Men movies refuse to go away, so maybe I have too much faith in people. At least Jenika will have more chances to make us laugh at princesses.
[Via Deadline]