Charming. Prince Charming. – Cinderella’s Fella Gets His Own Film from Director of ‘Wonka’ and Paddington Films
Someday my Prince Charming movie will come.
Disney has finally decided to share the backstory of the generic prince who has wooed a princess or two in his day, and has tapped Wonka director Paul King to helm the project.
Prince Charming was the glass slipper-bearing prize at the end of Cinderella, and the one whose timely but non-consensual kiss saved the titular Snow White from death by poison apple in her movie. He’s also the go-to prince in other written fairy tales, like Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, though the Disney versions of those characters got other monikers. (And Snow White’s prince was later found out to be named Florian, so it was really more of a descriptive nickname than an actual name in that movie.)
Disney’s Snow White was released in 1937 and Cinderella in 1950, but the character of Prince Charming pre-dates every movie, being first used in the 17th century in a tale called The Blue Bird, written by Madame Catherine d’Aulnoy in France.
Will it be a live-action or animated film? That’s a good question that no one is answering yet. Simon Barnaby and Jon Croker are co-writing the screenplay, and no plot details, including whether he’ll serve as a male damsel-in-distress for a charming princess, have been leaked. However, this Prince will not specifically be the character from Cinderella, as far as anyone knows.
King also directed Paddington and the beloved Paddington 2, and while he took a pass on the next entry in the fuzzy franchise, he did help out with the story for Paddington in Peru.
This is not the first attempt to expand on the character, which was mostly a plot device in the princess films. In 2017, Disney announced a live-action film to be directed by Stephen Chbosky and written by Matt Fogel, but that did not go into production.
No release date has yet been forecast for the Prince Charming movie.