More often than not, people’s favorite character in a classic Disney animated film is usually the villain, especially if that villain is a woman. Let’s face it, Disney pretty much invented the badass female villain archetype with the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and has been improving on the model ever since. It’s the reason that their live-action retelling of Sleeping Beauty focused on Maleficent, and why Cate Blanchett got so much screentime as the wicked stepmother in the recent live-action version of Cinderella.
And it appears that tradition isn’t stopping anytime soon, as Disney has just hired screenwriter Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks, Fifty Shades of Grey) to tell the story of Cruella de Vil, the main baddie from Disney’s classic 1961 animated film 101 Dalmatians. Marcel is working with Togetherness co-creator Steve Zissis on the story. The movie would be simply titled Cruella.
While this should come as no surprise, since Disney currently has something like a dozen animated to live action adaptations in some stage of active development, the adaptation of Cruella’s story is a little bit curious, because it’s one they’ve already done. Twice in fact. The 1996 101 Dalmatians starring Glenn Close as Cruella was Disney’s first venture into making live-action adaptations of their animated hits and was so successful, it even got a sequel, 102 Dalmatians. Aside from getting Meryl Streep herself, how do you top Glenn Close? (Watch: Disney will try and get Meryl Streep, just because I wrote that and put it out into the universe.)
Although there is no release date for this movie yet, yesterday Disney announced four different release dates for unknown live-action titles: December 22, 2017; November 2, 2018; March 29, 2019; and November 18, 2019. There is a good chance that Cruella could be one of those movies, if it gets ahead in the development process faster than the live-action Tinkerbell movie, or Mulan, or Dumbo, or…well, you get the idea.
What do you think of this latest Disney adaptation, and who would you like to see play Cruella de Vil? Let us know in the comments!
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IMAGE: Walt Disney Studios
