Chris Weitz Found Balance Between Contemporary & Classic For Cinderella

by Helen Earnshaw | 15 March 2015

Chris Weitz has revealed that he had to find a balance between contemporary and classic when penning the screenplay for the upcoming Cinderella.

Chris Weitz

Weitz has got his writer's hat on for the new imagining of this well known tale, as he teamed with director Kenneth Branagh.

And Weitz says that Brangh was keen on there being a modern feel to the story, as well as keeping some classic elements from the original Disney animation.

Speaking to Collider, Weitz said: "The trick for us was making it contemporary without losing the classic feel and without losing a sense of the Disney animated version.

"And so, Ken [Branagh] was very keen on having a movie that wore its heart on its sleeve, and really being straight-forward about the message of the film and not ironic, which is one of the ways that people do fairy tales, these days. They're often revisionist, or ironic or snarky, and we weren't really interested in that."

Weitz has moved between writing and the director's chair in recent years, but this is his first film screenplay since his adaptation of The Golden Compass - he has since been working on television series About a Boy.

Cinderella is a live action version of the Disney classic, which sees Branagh back in the director's chair. Lily James will take on the title role, while Richard Madden, Helena Bonham Carter, and Cate Blanchett are some of the other great names on board.

Cinderella is the latest Disney movie to be given a live action makeover, and comes a year after the huge success of Maleficent - which went on to be one of the biggest films of 2015.

As for Weitz, he has another huge project on the horizon, as he has penned the screenplay for Star Wars spinoff film Rouge One. The movie will see Gareth Edwards in the director's chair, while Felicity Jones has been announced on the cast list. The film will be released December 2016.