Deadline have announced that Disney is trying to entice Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo, Never Let Me Go) to direct the new live action re-imagining of the fairy tale, Cinderella about the princess who lives with her wicked stepmother and is forced to care for her stepsisters.
The news comes after the studio bought the project after its billion-dollar grossing 3D Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton last year starring Johnny Depp. Since then the number of productions of public domain fairy tales have increased including Catherine Harwicke’s Red Riding Hood earlier this year starring Amanda Seyfried.
Simon Kinberg is set to produce the new adaptation of the tale and insiders describe The Devil Wears Prada screenwriter scribe Aline Brosh McKenna’s script as the re-imaging of the classic tale where the prince is set for a politically arranged marriage, until the evil plan is threatened when the prince meets Cinderella. Brosh McKenna’s script was sold to Disney last year in a seven-figure deal.
This could be quite an interesting combination of filmmaking here, as Romanek’s last film, Never Let Me Go starring Keira Knightly, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield didn’t quite make the box office impression everyone was expecting it to and so he really needs a clean break to be able to gain kudos again amongst the critics. Add together the director who made Robin Williams scary, the scriptwriter who made Anne Hathaway ugly (really?) and the producer who wrote Mr and Mrs Smith and I think this new adaptation could be quite interesting.
