Robert Stromberg, the winner of back-to-back art-direction Academy Awards — for Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, respectively — has been tapped by Disney to make his directorial debut with Maleficent, a “revisionist take on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale that is being constructed as a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie to play the villainess.” Jolie, who, according to IMDb, has no other acting projects lined up at the moment, could perhaps be a perfect star fit for Stromberg, considering the fact that she herself just recently made her directorial debut with the Golden-Globe nominated In the Land of Blood and Honey. [Deadline]
The Maleficent screenplay has been penned by Linda Woolverton, most recently the scribe behind Alice in Wonderland, and, a decade-and-a-half earlier, one of the credited screenwriters for The Lion King. Joe Roth is set to produce the film, which will hopefully line up nicely with the blockbusters already situated within Disney‘s upcoming slate — The Avengers, most notably, as well as Oz: The Great and Powerful (for which Stromberg handled the production design), and Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger.
Do you think Stromberg will make a smooth transition to the director’s chair?