“Tangled” is the latest Disney movie to get the live-action treatment.
The studio is developing a reimagining of the 2010 animated movie, a musical take on the Brothers Grimm story about the magically long-haired princess Rapunzel. “The Greatest Showman” filmmaker Michael Gracey is in talks to direct the film from a script by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, whose credits include Netflix’s campy dark comedy “Do Revenge, “Thor: Love and Thunder” and the upcoming “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot. Casting has yet to be announced.
“Tangled” tells the tale of Rapunzel, a princess (voiced by Mandy Moore) who is eventually rescued from her secluded tower by an outlaw named Flynn Rider. The well-reviewed film opened 14 years ago around Thanksgiving and generated $592 million at the global box office, which would have been a better result had the movie not reportedly carried a $260 million production budget. “Tangled,” which boasts the Oscar-nominated song “When Will My Life Begin,” inspired such spinoffs as the 2012 short film “Tangled Ever After” and 2017 TV series “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.”
Gracey made his directorial debut with 2017’s “The Greatest Showman,” the P.T. Barnum biographical musical drama starring Hugh Jackman. That film initially struggled at the box office before achieving sleeper-hit status with more than $450 million globally. Gracey’s latest project is “Better Man,” a semi-autobiographical story about British musician Robbie Williams, who is portrayed in the film by a chimpanzee.
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Disney has given numerous animated films the live-action treatment — including “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “Mulan,” “Dumbo” and “The Little Mermaid” — to varying degrees of commercial success. Up next, “Snow White” and “Lilo & Stitch” will open in theaters in 2025 while “Moana,” starring Dwayne Johnson as the tattooed demigod Maui, is set for 2026.
Deadline Hollywood first reported the news of Gracey’s attachement to “Tangled.”