It has been sixty-five years since Walt Disney Pictures introduced to us its beloved fairy tale Cinderella. Now, thanks to Sir Kenneth Branagh and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures the animated classic is coming to life for us all to relive the magic once again. The movie, which is set to be in theaters on March 13, 2015 will have Downtown Abbey’s Lily James as the famed character. We can also look forward to seeing Cate Blanchett play Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, Lady Tremaine and Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy godmother.
Sir Kenneth Branagh told E! News that Cinderella did a few unique challenges, “It’s a very unusual project because anybody sitting down almost certainly knows the story. They’ve had it read to them or they’ve seen the film. I think we get to refresh, reactive and recreate Cinderellafrom the inside out. The honoring of the original comes in, I think, as sort of a lightness of touch and a sort of lavishness.”
Branagh also said that when he was casting the lead role, he was on the look out for an actress who had both “intelligence” and “passion but at the same time someone who had a “strong sense of humor and a sort of beauty shining out from within.”
“Goodness can seem pious. It can seem righteous. It can seem too good to be true. We needed Cinderella to remain funny, sexy, smart and crucially kind,” said Branagh to E! News. “There was talk way back about redefining goodness as a superpower and kindness in the same way. I think it can be very active and charismatic and compelling, but it needs to be lightly done. This Cinderella, she’s not empowered in the sense of being adversarial or self-pitying or victimized. She makes her own choices and she doesn’t indulge in her own pain or have any regard for her own hardships. She’s generous of spirit, and we needed that in the actress. Lily has great generosity of spirit, which really you can’t fake. I think the audience will intuit that. She is good company. She’s un-showy, yet she’s charismatic. And she wants to enjoy herself! She takes the blows in the movie. There’s loss—the loss of loved ones. There’s the cruelty and ignorance of other people. She knows love can be fleeting and so she’s determined to enjoy it. Underneath all of that comes this sense of fun and this sense of humor. I think she’s fun and funny.”
Cinderella is set to hit theaters on March 13, 2015. In the meantime, check out the magical trailer below:
