Tim Burton wants to curse Sleeping Beauty with MALEFICENT!!

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

AICN have heard that Tim Burton isn't quite done exploring the works of Disney's animated back catalogue just yet, and once his take on Alice in Wonderland is out of the way - he could move straight onto a live-action remake of Sleeping Beauty. Though it won't be a straight to the bone remake. Harry Knowles has heard it'll be titled Maleficent and in essence, a remake of Sleeping Beauty but from the villain's point of view. Maleficent was the super evil Queen of the Disney universe - the witch who cursed the young Princess Andora to prick her thumb and die on the spindle. She was slain with a sword through the heart at the end of Sleeping Beauty, but not before transforming herself into an impressive fire-breathing dragon. As /film's Brendon Connelly points out, Disney registered the domain name maleficentmovie.com last summer, and after making a revisionist Alice in Wonderland, and unusually getting a live-action Nicolas Cage movie based on the character of Yensid from The Sorcerer's Apprentice off the ground - the studio look have been quietly planning another left field red0 on an old favourite. Of course by basing a movie around a character named Maleficent (which means Evil-Doer) one really has to wonder how they will go about making her sympathetic and likeable enough to be on her side. Even if she is the most interesting aspect of Sleeping Beauty, just how does Disney make a multi-million dollar movie based on their harshest villain?

There isn't too many clues in Sleeping Beauty as to how Burton could approach this material. We know she has a backstory with the King & Queen as she "isn't wanted" at the christening of Princess Aurora like the other three fairy Godmothers - which of course is the inciting incident which leads to the really harsh cursing of the Princess in the first place. So I suppose, will it be a Wicked kind of adaptation where we venture into Maleficient's backstory and we find out where she became so unliked, and so vicious? What we expected to be Burton's next picture - his adaptation of the classic 60's vampire soap opera Dark Shadows with Johnny Depp is said to have hit script issues according to producer Graham King. He told CHUD last week that they are still awaiting a final script on that one, and the project is in no shape to film soon.