It seems that Hollywood just can’t get enough of reinventing fairy tales, though the audience and box office response to them has been mixed at best. “Beauty and the Beast in high school” romance flick Beastly was almost universally scorned by critics, though it managed to earn a modest profit off its relatively low production budget. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and Snow White and the Huntsman both did well enough overseas to compensate for their lukewarm domestic gross, and it was more or less the same deal for Snow White and the Huntsman‘s rival, Mirror Mirror.
The fairy tale trend is not over yet, though. Next year we can expect to see Maleficent, a live-action origin story for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty villain, and Guillermo Del Toro is planning another Beauty and the Beast adaptation with Emma Watson as the heroine. For whatever reason, live-action reinventions of classic fairy tales are incredibly in vogue right now. Personally, I blame Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which was one of the few fairy tale success stories at the box office, earning a worldwide gross of over $1 billion.
The fairy tale trend is not over yet, though. Next year we can expect to see Maleficent, a live-action origin story for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty villain, and Guillermo Del Toro is planning another Beauty and the Beast adaptation with Emma Watson as the heroine. For whatever reason, live-action reinventions of classic fairy tales are incredibly in vogue right now. Personally, I blame Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which was one of the few fairy tale success stories at the box office, earning a worldwide gross of over $1 billion.