Disney will go into production on its latest animated to live-action remake, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, next March in Vancouver, Canada, according to TheDisInsider. The report says Disney is now seeking actors for its central roles, including the titular princess, the Prince, the seven dwarfs and the Evil Queen, who doubles as an Old Hag. Marc Webb, director of The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel, directs the musical from a script penned by Erin Cressida Wilson (The Girl on the Train) under La La Land producer Marc Platt, who last teamed with Disney for Mary Poppins Returns and this year’s live-action Aladdin.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Also on board are Academy Award-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman), who created new music for Aladdin with Alan Menken. That film won Disney a magical $1.048 billion globally, making it the sixth highest-grossing film of the year. Disney followed Aladdin with another winning remake — the Jon Favreau-directed The Lion King — that roared to $1.63 billion worldwide, making it the second highest-grossing film of 2019 behind only Disney’s own Marvel Studios blockbuster Avengers: Endgame.
Disney’s president of production Sean Bailey — who has led the charge on mining Disney’s treasure trove of cherished animated films and translating them into modern reinterpretations that almost always go on to score big at the box office — has credited Walt Disney Studios Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer Alan Horn with Disney’s decision to re-imagine its animated library.
“We were given an incredible opportunity to discover what we wanted to be as a live-action team. We were given a lot of latitude to think about what that was,” Bailey told Vulture in 2017. “We thought if Iron Man and Thor and Captain America are Marvel superheroes, then maybe Alice, Cinderella, Mowgli, and Belle are our superheroes, and Cruella and Maleficent are our supervillains. Maybe if there’s a way to reconnect with that affinity for what those characters mean to people in a way that gets the best talent and uses the best technology, that could become something really exciting. It feels very Disney, playing to the competitive advantages of this label.”
Disney is now developing 101 Dalmatians prequel Cruella, starring Emma Stone and set for release in 2021, and The Little Mermaid, starring Halle Bailey and directed by Rob Marshall (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Into the Woods). Disney first releases its Angelina Jolie-starring Maleficent sequel, Mistress of Evil, Oct. 18 before debuting the live-action Mulan March 27, 2020.
