14-year-old ingénue Hailee Steinfeld has had a meteoric rise in Hollywood, making the leap from blingified TV commercials to an Oscar-nominated turn in the wildly successful Coen Brothers’ western/remake True Grit. Now, those who were disappointed this rising starlet didn’t win the lead in the much-anticipated Hunger Games adapatation, may be pleased to learn Steinfeld has been attached to a Sleeping Beauty spec script that hopes to feed the flames of the ongoing revisionist fairytale trend.
According to Deadline, writer Lindsay Devlin’s twist on the old tale of a catatonic princess entails a much more involved protagonist. No helpless damsel in distress here! Following the wave of action heroines, Steinfeld would play a more proactive princess, as this Sleeping Beauty doesn’t nap, waiting for a prince to save her. Instead, she enters a world of dreams where she must battle her way out, being her own hero. The production package, which bundles the script with Steinfeld’s involvement, is currently seeking studio support. My guess is that with Steinfeld’s popularity and the fervor for fairy tales, we’ll be posting an update of a deal in short order.
With last year’s Alice in Wonderland making over a billion dollars worldwide, Hollywood’s been rushing to produce girl-centered fairy tales with a more progressive bent. Beyond the three different Snow White tales currently in development, there’s also another Sleeping Beauty tale that focuses on her evil tormentor, aptly titled Maleficent, and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which will co-star Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, and feature professional creeper Peter Stormare.
However, despite the enthusiasm of studios, movie audiences haven’t proved as hungry for fairy tales as Hollywood has hoped. Both Red Riding Hood, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and Beastly, the tattooed teen take on Beauty and the Beast, hoped to cash in on the proposed fairytale trend, while appealing to Twilight fans. Yet both flopped at the box office. Does this mean audiences don’t crave fairy tales retold, or just that those two offerings weren’t worth the price of admission? As someone who is eager to see several of these proposed projects, I’m hoping the latter is true. However, I admittedly found Alice to be wildly underwhelming, and it flourished at the box office, so whose to say? Is the key not fairy tales, but Johnny Depp? Tim Burton? Gratuitous CGI?
What say you? Is the fairytale genre a worthwhile trend or just Hollywood stampeding to cash in? Which fairytale flick are you most interested in?