Maleficent Nabs Alice’s Screenwriter

Hot on the heels of the success of Alice In Wonderland, Disney has hired Alice scribe Linda Woolverton to pen the live action screenplay of Sleeping Beauty from the wicked queen Maleficent’s point of view.

Maleficent will probably be in the same spirit of the book and Broadway musical “Wicked”, based on the “Wizard of Oz” books. The character of Maleficent is considered by most to be the darkest of Disney’s villians, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not the film ends up as straight family fare or something a bit more mature.

Maleficent might reunite Woolverton with Tim Burton, but at this point, it’s too early to say.  He has been interested in the project since last summer while he was working on post-production of Alice and both Disney and Burton’s own people have been trying to keep a lid on any news regarding it.  Burton has more than a few projects on the horizon at the moment, but with the success that Alice has brought the House of Mouse, there is little doubt that they will try to keep Burton involved with the project.