Maleficent (lost production material of cancelled Disney animated film; 2003-2005)
This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its excessively long plot section, lack of references and unfinished nature.
Status: Lost
Maleficent was a Disney 3D animated feature based on the 1959 Sleeping beauty that started development around 2003 but was canceled in 2005 as they wanted go for a live-action approach instead. In 2003, during Don Hahn's meeting with Disney's animation department, it was suggested to create an origin film about Maleficent from Disney's animated film Sleeping Beauty (1959) in the same vein as then just released Broadway musical Wicked.
Plot
The story starts with the discovery of a newborn in a barren land that was once part of the Enchanted Forest. The Queen of fairies, who is responsible for raising all creatures born within the forest, finds the baby and is struck by its mysterious beauty. She names the child Maleficent, and welcomes her into the forest where all fairies reside.
As Maleficent grows up, she proves to be a mischievous and selfish child, and is hated by the other fairies due to her dark magical abilities and longer ears. Despite this treatment, Maleficent's greatest dream is to one day take the throne from the Queen of fairies. On the lunar celebration of the new year, all fairies from around the forest gather to be blessed by the holy dove, a white bird that gives them more power. However, the dove only visits certain fairies to bless them, and Maleficent is not one of them. Furious, Maleficent crashes into the Queen's hall and demands to see her. The Queen tells Maleficent that she does not give powers to young evil fairies, and that Maleficent already has her own dark powers. The Queen then orders her guards to kick Maleficent out of the hall.
Feeling devastated and rejected, Maleficent retreats to her crooked tree and plots her revenge. She goes to the garden where all the fairies are celebrating and reveals a dark secret about the Queen: that she is in a secret love relationship with King Stefan of a nearby kingdom. The Queen quickly orders her guards to remove Maleficent, but the damage has already been done.
The revelation caused a stir among the fairies, as the Queen had always maintained that she was above such mortal affairs. Many fairies were shocked and disappointed, and some even began to question the Queen's leadership. Maleficent, however, was thrilled with the chaos she had caused. She reveled in the Queen's embarrassment and the dismay of the other fairies.
As the fairies began to disperse, the Queen called for her guards to capture Maleficent. The Queen cursed her with large long horns, so that everyone will know Maleficent's true intentions. Maleficent ran, she was quick and agile. She ran through the forest, her cries echoing through the trees. She knew that she will live a life being known as evil.
From that day on, Maleficent was known as the "Mistress of All Evil" among the fairies. She became feared and respected, and many fairies came to her for guidance and protection. She began to gather a group of followers, and soon she was the leader of a powerful and formidable group of dark creatures.
After years of planning revenge on the Queen, Maleficent carefully planned her attack. She studied the layout of the Queen's castle and learned the routines of her guards. She also made alliances with other fairies who shared her hatred of the Queen.
One night, when the Queen was sound asleep, Maleficent and her allies snuck into the castle. They easily overcame the guards and made their way to the Queen's chambers. Maleficent personally killed the Queen in her sleep.
In the morning, the Queen's fairy sons discovered their mother's body. They were devastated and immediately began to plan her funeral. Meanwhile, Maleficent acted as if she knew nothing about the death, pretending to be shocked and saddened by the news.
As the Queen's oldest son, Albrich, took the throne, Maleficent began to make her move. She started to gain support from other fairies who were unhappy with Albriech's rule and began to build her own army. Her ultimate goal was to overthrow Albriech and take control of the fairy kingdom for herself.
One night, as King Stefan and his new wife celebrated the birth of their daughter, Maleficent snuck into the castle and placed a curse on the baby. She declared that on Aurora's sixteenth birthday, she would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die.
The King and his wife were horrified and immediately set out to protect their daughter. They sought the help of three fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, who were known for their magical powers. The three fairies agreed to help the King and his wife and took the baby Aurora into hiding.
For the next sixteen years, the fairies raised Aurora as their own, keeping her hidden from Maleficent and the outside world. They taught her about the ways of the forest and how to control her own magic.
As Aurora's sixteenth birthday approached, the fairies knew that they had to act fast to break the curse. They set out on a quest to find the one person who could save Aurora: Prince Phillip, a brave and handsome prince from a neighboring kingdom.
As Aurora wanders barefoot through the springtime wood, she radiates in the glory of Flora's and Fauna's gifts of beauty and song. She hums operatically and her congenial friends, the happy animals of the forest, come out to play. Her sirenlike voice also mesmerizes a distant horse rider, who convinces his tired white steed, Samson, to search for its source. Aurora stops singing to tell the animals about a vivid dream she had in which she fell in love with a prince. The passing rider has meanwhile fallen in a stream because of his horse's urgency, and a chipmunk notices that his cape, hat, and boots hang nearby to dry. The animals swipe the clothes and humorously simulate the dream-prince: an owl flutters in the cape, two hopping rabbits match steps in the boots, and the chipmunk sits on the owl's head wearing the hat.
Playing along good-naturedly, Aurora dances with her forest friends, sweetly singing. Midway through the dance, the mysterious rider finds his clothes and cuts in seamlessly, dancing and singing with a shocked Aurora. Confused and surely feeling the sparks of love at first sight, Aurora, having been told not to speak to strangers, tries to flee. The nameless rider asks for her name. Flustered, she doesn't reveal it, yet manages to yelp out an invitation to come to her cottage that night.
Back at the cottage, the bumbling and nitpicky fairies can't bake a legitimate cake or sew a proper dress, which Aurora will need to assume her rightful title as Princess Aurora. So, at Merryweather's urging, the fairies agree to make one exception to their no-magic rule and use their magic wands. dancing mops joyously sweep the cottage and anthropomorphic cake ingredients read their own recipe and waltz into the mixing bowl. Flora and Merryweather argue over the color of Aurora's dress.
Each wants it to be the color of her own dress: Merryweather's is blue and Flora's is pink. Riled, they start zapping with their wands everything in the cottage, turning it blue or pink. As a result, colorful magic dust spurts up the chimney. Maleficent's raven spots the dust and flies down to surreptitiously witness the scene of Aurora's return. He watches Aurora return a new woman, gaily dancing and singing, clearly in love. The fairies are forced to tell her the truth of her life, that she's a princess who is already betrothed to Prince Phillip. The news devastates Aurora, who flees in tears to her room.
King Stefan and King Hubert together await sunset, the time of Aurora's prophesied return. Standing by a sumptuous feast, the anxious men argue briefly, then drink to friendship. Prince Phillip returns to the castle, devilishly tricking Hubert into agreeing to his marriage to the peasant girl instead of Aurora. Phillip rides off before Hubert realizes what has happened, heading back to Aurora's cottage. But Aurora, teary-eyed, has been secretly brought to Stefan's castle.
Placing a gold crown upon her head, the fairies leave Aurora alone for a few moments to contemplate her future. Immediately, a glowing green ball puts Aurora in a trance and leads her through dark passages within the castle, up a staircase and into a tower, where it turns into the augured spinning wheel. Realizing their error too late, the panicked fairies follow and are able to make Aurora hesitate before touching the wheel, but Maleficent's powers are too strong. The princess touches the spindle and collapses.
The sun begins to set, and the celebration nears. But Hubert has yet to tell Stefan about Phillip's intentions, and Aurora lies comatose in an upper chamber. Unsure of how to proceed, the fairies decide to put everyone in the kingdom to sleep as well. As Flora sprinkles fairy dust over those around the throne, Hubert reveals that Phillip met his peasant girl "Once upon a dream." What luck- Phillip and Aurora are already in love but they just don't know it. Phillip can break Maleficent's curse with a kiss, so the fairies regroup and fly back to the cottage. However, Maleficent and her henchmen have already captured Phillip. Expecting a peasant boy, Maleficent is overjoyed at her luck and steals the prince away.
Finding only Phillip's hat at their cottage, the fairies sneak into Maleficent's castle. Maleficent taunts Phillip, revealing the identity of his true love but refusing to release him to her for one hundred years. The fairies sneak in when Maleficent finally goes to bed, zap open the chains that bind Phillip, and arm him with a Shield of Virtue and Sword of Truth.
An army of one, with three helpers, Phillip must navigate a brutal path to return to his true love. First, Maleficent's castle crumbles and goes up in flames around him. Then she makes a forest of thorns grow in front of Stefan's castle. But he finds a way to go inside the castle and awaken the sleeping beauty. Finally, she turns herself into a dragon to stop them from leaving the castle, But Phillip brandishes the Sword of Truth and slays her with one thrust, Aurora shouts, feeling sorry for Maleficent. Despite all the terrible things that she did, Aurora insists on giving Maleficent a proper burial in a stone mausoleum, laying her to rest.
In the final scene, the Fair Folk come together to bid farewell to the fallen woman who once fought so bravely for the Enchanted forest. In a scene eerily mirroring Aurora's christening, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather give Maleficent three final blessings, praying that she will finally know peace, that she will find a kind afterlife, and that the darkness in her soul will trouble her no more. In a last gesture of kindness, Aurora lays a chain of flowers atop her tomb before leaving with Phillip. Moments later, with a final shot of Maleficent's silhouette as she rises from her stone tomb, slips Aurora's chain of flowers into her pocket, and silently walks out into the night. The End.
History
In a interview with Don Hahn, Hahn said the light bulb to give Maleficent her own story went off more than 10 years before the live action Maleficent film was released, in a meeting with Disney's animation department, as they were all mulling over possibilities of fleshing out existing characters in the Disney canon.
"It was about 2003, when were sitting around one day, asking, 'Who is a really strong and interesting female character we can base a movie on,' and somebody said 'Maleficent,' but I can't point out exactly who it was," Hahn recalled. "It made sense, because she was this really popular villainess who is glamorous and like a runway model. Still, she's been wounded somehow in the past."
The timing of the idea was largely inspired by the Broadway smash, "Wicked," which delved into the history of the witch sisters from "The Wizard of Oz," Hahn said.
"We thought we could do a 'Wicked' thing with Maleficent and show her back story. That was just the germ of the idea and it sat in animation for a while," Hahn said. "We did some development and some drawings on it, but then it went over to live-action as Tim Burton got involved around 2005."
Eventually helping "Maleficent" along in its live-action ambitions was the blockbuster success of director Tim Burton's vibrant, colorful live-action opus "Alice in Wonderland," which gave somewhat of an alternate take on the time-honored tale-turned Disney animated classic.
Hahn said the first person he pitched "Maleficent" to was Burton, along with another film that gave Burton a chance to revisit a bit of his own filmmaking past and here is where the live-action adaptation started.
Gallery
Concept shown during Private Screening in 2004
Concept shown during Private Screening in 2004
Concept shown during Private Screening in 2004
Concept Art
Concept Art
Concept Art
Concept Art
Concept Art
Concept Art
Concept Art
Concept Art
