The Trend: Live-action revisionist updates of classic fairy tales. Tim Burton's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's seminal 19th Century fantasy novels Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass shocked many box office analysts when it opened to a massive $116.1m domestically on its way to a worldwide gross of $1.025bn, becoming only the sixth movie in history to pass the ten-figure milestone. Of course, being the first high-profile 3D release following the game-changing Avatar surely helped, as critical opinion on the final product was decidedly mixed. Since then, a number of revisionist fairy tales have made their way to the big screen with varying results. Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke's 2011 take on Red Riding Hood was slaughtered by critics and failed to make an impression at the box office, while last year Brian Singer's $185m Jack the Giant Slayer barely clawed back its budget. The summer of 2012 saw competing Snow White movies released just two months apart, with Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror grossing less than half of Snow White and the Huntsman's $396m total, with the response to both movies being decidedly lukewarm. Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful fared a lot better both critically and commercially and nearly cracked the $500m mark, while the modestly-budgeted Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters was a disappointment at the domestic box office but still grossed over $220m worldwide. Despite the patchy track record of these fairy tale adaptations, the trend shows no sign of abetting. This year Angelina Jolie will play the title character in Robert Stromberg's Maleficent, which promises 'the untold story' of one of Disney's most iconic villains. Next year, Lily James will play Cinderella in Kenneth Branagh's retelling of the famous tale while there are also sequels to Alice in Wonderland and Oz the Great and Powerful in active development.
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