Disney has been having a lot of success lately with live-action adaptations of some classic fairy tales, many of which the studio famously and previously adapted in animated form. Some, like Kenneth Branagh’s recent Cinderella, have offered direct adaptations while others, like Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, have served as quasi-sequels. Then there’s cases like Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent where the story is retold from a new perspective. It sounds like it’s that latter approach that Walt Disney Pictures is after today as The Hollywood Reporter brings word that a Prince Charming movie is in the works at the studio.
Originally scripted by Matt Fogel (who previously served as assistant to Phil Lord and Chris Miller on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), the Prince Charming movie script was picked up by Disney today with the trade only going so far as to say that Fogel’s script offers a “revisionist take.”
Prince Charming, the archetypal fairytale hero, has actually been brought to the big screen by Disney a few times in recent months. Richard Madden played the Prince in the Branagh film while Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen played dueling iterations of the role (one Rapunzel’s Prince and one Cinderella’s Prince) in Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods.
The Prince Charming movie joins a number of live-action Disney fairy tale films heading to the big screen. Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book hits theaters April 15, 2016 with the aforementioned Beauty and the Beast following on March 17, 2017. After that, plans call for a Tim Burton-directed Dumbo and new live-action versions of Winnie the Pooh, Mulan, Pinnochio and more. There’s also a sequel to Alice in Wonderland on the way with Alice Through the Looking Glass (arriving May 27, 2016), reports of one for Maleficent in development as well and a live-action Peter Pan spinoff, Tink, set to star Reese Witherspoon as the iconic fairy.
