Often times the hiring of a director signals what kind of movie that a studio is interested in making. So forgive me if I’m scratching my head over the fact that Disney is looking at Never let Me Go and One Hour Photo helmer Mark Romanek to direct a live action version of the classic fairy tale Cinderella.
Perhaps a clue can be found in Deadline’s reportage on the story. Disney bought the pitch for the film from The Devil Wears Prada screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna last year for seven figures in the wake of the studio’s darker take on Alice In Wonderland raking in over $1 billion at the box office. Deadline sites insiders describing the story as a “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.”
OK, so that sounds a bit more interesting. It remains to be seen if Romanek is interested in taking the job though. His last big studio gig was with Universal developing The Wolfman. Citing “creative differences,” he bowed out of that project just weeks before filming was scheduled to start. More recently, he was on the short list to direct The Wolverine over at Twentieth Century Fox, but he lost that gig to James Mangold.
