By Disney is making Maleficent, an alternate telling of Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of one of the best Disney villains ever. This already sounds like a solid lock to me. But who is going to direct it? Tim Burton was named early on, but he (thankfully) left the project, and now David O. Russell is interested, likely so he can change the story to be about dinosaurs in space or something else completely unrelated to the original movie. You know who would be an awesome director? Guillermo del Toro, that’s who!
The talented director thinks so himself, as he told the LA Times that he “would love to,” and that “if they ask [he’ll] take the meeting.” Del Toro is a giant fan of the Disney movie, lavishing special praise on Maleficent’s dragon form, which he says is “the only design with the wings separate from the front legs, the only time that design has ever worked.”
A del Toro version of Sleeping Beauty could be stunning, but I thought the same thing about his takes on The Hobbit and At the Mountains of Madness, and we all know how those turned out. With most of del Toro’s attention wrapped up in his work on Pacific Rim, I’m bringing my hopes back down to earth, lest my heart be broken yet again.
You can read Guillermo del Toro’s full thoughts on the film after the break.
[LA Times via /Film]Let me put it this way, if they ask I’ll take the meeting. I think Maleficent’s dragon is the only design with the wings separate from the front legs, the only time that design has ever worked. And let me tell you how much of a fan I am. I have a collection of over two or three dozen Maleficent figures, some of them four or five feet tall. I own about 10 pieces of conceptual art from Sleeping Beauty that include the dragon and a lot more pieces that are just from Sleeping Beauty. It’s one of my three favorite Disney films. I would love to. But I don’t want to put too many hopes on it. They’re probably on a fast track and I cannot take any more projects on a fast track.