The Walt Disney Company has lately made something of an artform out of reimagining its own animated features into (often) billion-dollar live-action films, starting with Alice in Wonderland in 2010 and continuing with Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, as well as the photorealistic computer animated remake of The Lion King.
A live-action version of Mulan, said to be more faithful to the original Chinese folktale than Disney’s 1998 animated film, is set to premiere this Spring, with Cruella, The Little Mermaid, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan & Wendy, The Sword in the Stone, Lilo & Stitch, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Bambi, as well as Jungle Book and Aladdin sequels and possible Tinker Bell and Prince Charming projects, slated to be remade over the coming years.
According to The DisInsider, a potential live-action Rapunzel film has now been added to that extensive list as well, though whether the project will be a remake of their own Tangled or, like Mulan, attempt to be more faithful to the original fairytale remains unknown. What is known though is that Nutcracker and the Four Realms scribe Ashleigh Powell has been tasked with scriptwriting duties and, moreover, English actor Ben Barnes has already expressed interest in the project.
I am so up for this @DisneyStudios …even down to the little chin beard! #Tangled https://t.co/oBx8g7pIJW
— Ben Barnes (@benbarnes) February 16, 2020
Whether Flynn Rider, the nom de plume of charismatic grifter Eugene Fitzherbert, will be involved in a live-action film will depend on how closely Disney intends to follow the Brothers Grimm’s story. Like all fairytales, though, the legend of Rapunzel includes a prince, so there will surely be room for Barnes if all parties involved are dedicated to making it happen.
The role would be a bit of a reversal for Barnes though, who recently played former Marine Corps Scout Sniper Billy Russo, also known as the villain Jigsaw, in 25 of 26 episodes of the Netflix series The Punisher. Spinning out of the events of the second season of Daredevil, the show was originally an ancillary part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but is no longer treated as such since the shuttering of Jeph Loeb’s Marvel Television division.
Barnes also has some history with Disney, having portrayed Prince Caspian X in Andrew Adamson’s 2008 Chronicles of Narnia film Prince Caspian, which was a follow-up to the 2005 remake of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, based on the series of fantasy novels by C. S. Lewis. Barnes played Prince Caspian again in the third film of the Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was distributed in 2010 by 20th Century Fox, long before that company would be bought up by the House of Mouse, thereby securing Disney’s rights to all three Chronicles of Narnia films.
Tell us, though, would you like to see the actor portray Flynn in a remake of Tangled? Let us know by dropping a comment down below.
