'Prince Charming' Hires Stephen Chbosky To Write And Direct Disney Reimagining
The Perks of Being a Wallflower writer-director Stephen Chbosky will pen and helm Disney's upcoming Prince Charming, a live-action reimagining of the Prince Charming trope made popular in Disney flicks like Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and even Enchanted. Prince Charming will be the latest in a string of live-action Disney works that dip into their vault of classic animated tales and reimagine them for a whole new audience. More details about the Prince Charming director await you below.
Ahead of his new film Wonder, writer-director Stephen Chbosky, who wrote the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower and also adapted it for the screen, will write and direct Disney's Prince Charming, per The Hollywood Reporter. The film is described as a reimagining of the Prince Charming trope that tends to appear in multiple fairy tales, including the Disney animated classics Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. You know the one: the handsome prince who sweeps in to rescue the heroine at her time of need. The story will focus on the less-charming brother of Prince Charming, who has failed to live up to the family name.
The project was first announced back in July 2015, but now it seems to finally be getting off the ground. This won't be the first time Chbosky has worked with Disney. The writer and filmmaker also co-wrote the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman of Mandeville Films/TV, who produced Chbosky's upcoming Wonder, will produce Prince Charming. The script was originally written by Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son writer Matt Fogel, but Chbosky will likely now take a crack at a re-write before helming the film.
Prince Charming will give Disney yet another opportunity to clean-up at the box office by dipping back into the well of their animated classics and giving them a live-action twist. Of all the current and up-coming live-action Disney films (which includes Tim Burton's Dumbo, Guy Ritchie's Aladdin and Pinocchio, which just recently lost Sam Mendes as a director), Prince Charming sounds most like Maleficent, which reimagined Sleeping Beauty from the point-of-view of the sorceress who cast the spell that put Sleeping Beauty's Aurora into her coma. Prince Charming also kind of sounds like David Gordon Green's Your Highness, which also focused on a the ne'er-do-well brother of a dashing prince. I'm sure Disney's take will have less stoner humor in it than Green's film.Wonder, Chbosky's next film, will hit theaters November 17, 2017.