Ignacio Laguía Cassany, Pablo Castrillo Maortua

“Disney remakes itself. The retelling process from Sleeping Beauty to Maleficent”

Universidad de Navarra, Spain

In recent statements, Rachel Zegler, the actress set to portray Snow White in Disney’s upcoming live-action remake, stated that the protagonist of this film is “not going to be dreaming about true love” but “about becoming the leader she knows she can be” (D23 Expo, 2022). Aside from fan-fueled online controversy, this apparently casual remark may in fact be expressive of a meaningful change in Disney’s approach to its own source materials—one that goes beyond what is commonly understood as a remake. Indeed, the House of Mouse has deployed in recent years a concerted effort to retell the classics that originally built its brand, updating the stories to include contemporary values and thus, in principle, make them more appealing to contemporary audiences.

This paper will aim to to determine how this creative process is being carried out by analyzing a successful case of Disney self-retelling, that of Sleeping Beauty (1959) and its spin-off/remake, Maleficent (2014). Here we understand the retelling process and Disney’s work of rewriting its own stories in the sense articulated by authors like Hundertmark (2021) and Rowe (2022), among others. Our analysis will delve into three narrative categories: the evolution of the princess, the change in the expression of antagonism, and the presence of the comedic sidekick; and it will do so at the level of the screenplay, by comparing the most important dialogue lines from both films—thus also establishing a dialogue between the two stories.

Ignacio Laguía is a doctoral student at the University of Navarra, where he also graduated from a B.A. in Film and Media. His research focuses on the narrative model created by Disney to adapt literary fairy tales as animated films, and their evolution in the history of the company.

Pablo Castrillo is a screenwriter and associate professor in the Film Department at the University of Navarra (Spain), where he also serves as Vicedean of Student Affairs at the School of Communication. His most recent publication is the book History and Story in the American Political Thriller Film: Hollywood in the Labyrinth (Lexington Books, 2023). He has also published scholarly work in the Journal of Popular Film and Television, the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the Journal of Screenwriting.