In an interview with
Collider while promoting Disney's
Oz: The Great & Powerful, producer Joe Roth talks about two of the studio's other planned fantasy films:
Maleficent (which stars Angelina Jolie as the classic
Sleeping Beauty villainess) and a sequel to Tim Burton's 2010 hit
Alice In Wonderland. For the former, he says that they approached a story that doesn't make Maleficent "completely evil", making her a sympathetic character and somebody who has a story.
"We flipped it on its head. Linda Woolverton wrote that, who also wrote Alice in Wonderland, and she also wrote Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. So, I’m trusting her imagination and understanding of telling a story that the curse on Sleeping Beauty wasn’t made by someone who was completely evil, and that she also had a story." He also says that casting Angelina Jolie was crucial to the film, and believes that
Maleficent will be young actress Elle Fanning's breakthrough role.
"It would have been really difficult to make Maleficent without Angie. And I think that movie will be Elle Fanning’s coming out. People will be like, 'Oh, I remember Elle Fanning when she was in Maleficent. That was where I first saw her.'"
Finally, he comments on their approach to the
Alice In Wonderland sequel, which is currently being scripted by Linda Woolverton.
"It’s a whole new cloth. In that case, I went to the writer, Linda Woolverton, who came up with a story that takes place in a different time, but has the same characters." For Collider's full interview with Roth (in which he discusses
Oz: The Great & Powerful and working on iconic fantasy characters), click the source link below.
Maleficent is set to be released July 2nd, 2014. You can check out
Oz: The Great & Powerful in theaters now.
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