According to Tracking Board, the latest script making its way through Hollywood right now is Princesses by Nir Paniry, described as “a female-driven Avengers featuring classic fairy tale princesses”. It’s being pitched to everyone, though, even though we all know that the only logical home for it is Disney.
Image: Snow White, Disney
Of course, Disney already has a live-action fairy tale mashup in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, which started out fun-ridiculous and is, by now, basically a bowl of cheese-covered sequins in terms of over-the-top ridiculousness. Also, part of the thing about The Avengers was that a lot of those superheroes had individual movies to establish their look and character. If you’re a studio that isn’t Disney, you don’t really have a catalogue of established princesses to pull from — just generic ones.
Tracking Board also adds that the version of the movie being shopped to Disney includes Joachim Ronning, director of the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Depending on how the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean does, that could make the package more or less attractive to Disney.
Either way, I’m having trouble seeing a successful Princesses at any other studio — at least not one that doesn’t either take years to establish or ends up looking like a generic, just-this-side-of-copyright-law, Disney knock-off. Disney may not own the original fairy tales, but they do own the look of the princesses they made famous. And that’s what everyone wants to see, anyway.
[Tracking Board via Coming Soon]