Disney hopes lighting will strike twice with live-action adaptation for Maleficent

Dear Tim Burton,

Two years ago, Gordon wrote to you a letter where he was afraid you were going to totally fuck up a live-adaptation of Alice in Wonderland by casting a 17-year old girl in the titular role.

He eventually got over it when he saw the first trailers and understood the storyline, and a light bulb even snapped on over my head when someone revealed that the kooky character designs for the Mad Hatter weren’t just you or your art directors and/or your Academy Award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood faffing around but an updating of the animated characters’ look.

However, it’s my turn to be nervous after looking at The Hollywood Reporter‘s Heat Vision blog and learning that Walt Disney Pictures and Alice screenwriter Linda Woolverton want to cast the same kind of adaptation magical spell onto Maleficent.

The wicked fairy godmother of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is my favorite Disney character; in fact, I adore the character so much that upon learning that someone I was meeting for a first date was in the original “Fantasmic!” cast and played the character before she turns into the dragon, it was sufficient reason to arrange for the second date.

This is where you come in, Mr. Burton. Borys Kit says that you’re not involved yet but that you were interested by the character while you were doing post-production work on Alice and that no one’s gone to your agents and said, “Let’s make a deal.” That’s fine.

The article goes on to say that a Woolverton script would feature a re-telling of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty from Maleficent’s point of view and I think I can understand what would make that kind of story compelling. I mean, after all, if Gregory Maguire was able to make a career out of the redemption of the Wicked Witch of the West, anything’s possible, right?

So, I guess this letter a tentative one of support for you becoming this movie’s eventual director, except for the part where I say that if you faff around too much with the best Disney villain who ever lived, I won’t invite you to my birthday party.

Yours,
Trisha Lynn