Disney is continuing to mine its collection of animated classics for live-action redoes and the huge box office receipts brought in from last summers’ Maleficent and this past springs’ Cinderella will surely motivate more projects onward. Now a different take appears in the works as the Mouse House has bought Prince Charming, a new script from Matt Fogel (Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son) focusing on the perspective of the male perspective. David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman of Mandeville Films (The Fighter) and Tripp Vinson (San Andreas) are on board as producers.
Described as a revisionist slant on the fairy tale genre, Prince Charming appears perfectly at home with with Disney’s continued efforts to broaden its fairy tale brand. Details on the project are scant– for instance whether this iteration of the character comes from the Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Sleeping Beauty mythologies or is being upended altogether is unknown at this time. Fogel, who previously worked as directors assistant to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on the animated feature Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), also contributed to the latest draft of Bob: The Musical, a long-in-development project at Disney.
Earlier this year, Kenneth Branagh (Thor) directed a new live action take on Cinderella (featuring Game of Thrones actor Richard Madden as Prince Charming) which recently crossed the $200 million mark at the domestic box office. This was on top of recent success stories including the Angelina Jolie-headlined Maleficent and Tim Burton’s 2010 lie-action remake of Alice of Wonderland, a film that made over $1 billion worldwide. On the horizon, Disney has a live-action Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson (Noah) and Dan Stevens (The Guest) heading to theaters on March 17, 2017– that film is also being produced by Mandeville Films.
There’s no word yet on the possible direction of Prince Charming nor when it may be headed to theaters.