Genre: Fairy Tale/Family
Premise: When Prince Charming gets his ass kicked by a former girlfriend, the Kingdom must entrust itself to his doofus twin brother, a man who can barely tie his own shoes.
About: This script sold… well, yesterday. Doesn’t get much hotter off the press than that. Disney continues its desire to turn its stable of historic cartoons into live-action counterparts. We saw it with Malificent, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast is in the works, and now Prince Charming. You may be asking, “Why?” Well, contrary to popular belief, there still isn’t a guaranteed formula for turning out profitable movies. So if a studio sees something that even remotely works, they hop on that trend until it stops working. The big difference with today’s script is that the writer wrote it on spec. Which means that the studio wasn’t involved. And this is good news for YOU GUYS as it demonstrates a writer identifying a studio need and filling it. That’s what all of you should be trying to do. Writer Matt Fogel was an assistant to Phil Lord and Chris Miller on their film, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. He also worked on the upcoming Tom Cruise project, Bob: The Musical, an earlier draft of which I reviewed last month.
Writer: Matt Fogel
Details: 100 pages
So yesterday I learned they’re doing a Han Solo origin story. Phil Lord and Chris Miller have finally been entrusted with a legitimate property and I couldn’t be happier for them.
But you know who I’m not happy for? Me.
The cool thing about Star Wars is that it’s this entire universe. It dates back thousands of years (where some of the video games take place). Disney bought this universe and their solution is to give us… a Han Solo origin tale? That seems so… risk-averse. Which I guess studios are. But I thought the whole point of these anthology movies was to take chances. Play it safe in 7, 8, and 9, but with these other films? Get a little wacky. Wear a dress for the night. Eat a box of brownie mix without baking it.
I suppose there’s too much money for them to take risks. But I’m telling you. There’s a reason your protagonist is typically the straight-man. It’s so he can anchor the movie. Once you try and make the “disruptor” character the lead, you end up having to neuter him to keep the movie grounded. I’m just not sure Han Solo or Boba Fett were ever meant to lead a film. I guess we’ll see, though.
So Prince Charming really isn’t about Prince Charming at all. It’s about Prince TREMBLING, Prince Charming’s lesser-known twin brother. You see, Prince Charming’s problem is he’s a little… too charming. Or, to be less vague – the guy bangs a lot of chicks.
At a certain point, he’s alienated so many women that he gets attacked by one, sending him into a coma. This is not a good time for the Kingdom to have a prince in a coma. The King is dying and the princess has just been kidnapped by their rival, King Antagony.
The King’s cabinet feels that if they don’t rescue the princess, King Antagony will sense their weakness and take over their kingdom, Game-of-Thrones style. This leaves them with only one choice, to pass Prince Trembling off as Prince Charming.
This is not an easy task as Prince Trembling is a coward who stumbles through life like a 16th century drunk Michael Cera. So Prince Trembling is put through a crash course of charm school and fight school in order to appear as the real Prince Charming.
Because everyone here knows it’ll be impossible for Prince Trembling to actually rescue someone, he’s sent to recruit a crazy pirate named Peter Wild, a man the real Prince Charming is quite chummy with. Prince Wild will facilitate the rescuing, get the princess back home, where she’ll marry the real Prince Charming once he wakes up, and everyone will live happily ever after.
But a problem arises when Peter Wild isn’t Peter Wild at all, but Snow White in disguise! Because Snow White is Prince Charming’s ex, she has a hankering to kill him. But when she realizes he’s actually Charming’s twin brother, she starts to like him.
Will the two be able to rescue the princess and save the kingdom? I’m not a betting man but I’d probably bet every cent I own on yes. Especially since I’ve read the script and know how it ends.
I’m not sure there’s much to learn from this script, to be honest. I mean, we’ve got our GSU in place, which is ESSENTIAL in any mainstream studio film. Goal – save the princess. Stakes – if they don’t, King Antagony takes their kingdom. Urgency – they have a few days to pull the rescue off.
You also have a dramatic irony storyline in place, which works well in these kinds of movies. The audience knows that Prince Charming isn’t really Prince Charming. However, everyone else thinks he is. They didn’t do a very good job selling this unfortunately (I was never convinced that if he was caught, it would change anything), but it was there.
My biggest issue with the script was Prince Trembling. I guess I assumed that if they were going to use a twin storyline, they’d make Charming’s twin his polar opposite. He’d be off-putting, socially awkward, and a miserable guy. You know, the opposite of charming!
Instead he’s just scared and goofy. Which didn’t make a whole lotta sense. I suppose it allows him to slip and fall a lot but slipping and falling, while allowing the character to get some cheap laughs, doesn’t do much in the way of character development. And Disney movies are all about character development.
I guess we get to see him go from cowardly to brave but, again, what do fear and bravery have to do with Prince Charming? It feels like we’re exploring themes that are a million miles away from our title character. Let’s explore issues that revolve around charm or womanizing or how our society is obsessed with looks. These are the talking points Prince Charming brings to the table.
These aren’t things I’d be harping on if this were more of a general fairy tale. But this movie is titled “Prince Charming.” We should be breaking down what that name, what that persona, means.
You may also be asking, “How do you do anything different with these kinds of movies?” They’ve been done to death. And I was asking the same thing. Well, the way you evolve these fairy tales is to integrate progressive ideas, and issues we’re dealing with today that we weren’t dealing with the last time this movie (or this type of movie) came out.
The hot topic right now, of course, is feminism. So it turns out the pirate Peter Wild isn’t a male pirate at all, but Snow White in disguise (yes, I groaned as well). This allows Disney to make an ass-kicking female character who thinks saving princesses is lame, which in turn allows us to explore some territory we haven’t explored in fairy tales before.
But the big takeaway from this sale is clearly Fogel’s business-savvy. He not only knew that Disney was looking for live-action versions of their famous characters. He also recognized that Disney wouldn’t need spec scripts for its well-established film properties (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King). They’d be developing those films in-house for sure. So he went for one of their peripheral characters, someone they likely hadn’t developed a script for. Smart!
While I would probably take my imaginary daughter to this movie, the character of Prince Trembling was a little too lame for me. And thusly, I can’t recommend it.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you write movies in the fairy tale universe, don’t limit yourself to just characters and ideas that have been explored before. Look for lesser known characters, or even completely new made-up characters, to add to the mix. These additions are what’s going to help your script stand out from the competition. So, for example, Fogel introduced this character named “White Knight.” We’ve heard that name before, of course. We have vague ideas of what that it means. But Fogel built an entire storyline around White Knight whereby he was a suit of armor with nothing inside. He was an ideal as opposed to a real person. I’m not sure Fogel hit the character out of the park, but the effort to create that type of character in the first place is exactly what you want to do. If you’re only sticking to the basics (Prince Charming, Snow White, a princess who needs rescuing), your script is going to be really generic. Those new unique characters are what’s going to make your fairy tale yours.
