Interview [Written]: Linda Woolverton

An Indiewire interview with screenwriter Linda Woolverton who wrote the screenplay for Maleficent which opens this weekend:

More than a decade before Frozen’s Jennifer Lee became the first woman to direct a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature and Brave’s Brenda Chapman became the first female director of a Pixar film, there was Linda Woolverton.

During the early stages of the Magic Kingdom’s big-screen cartoon comeback that began with 1989’s The Little Mermaid, Woolverton was the screenwriter behind the first animated film to compete in the best-picture category, 1992’s Beauty and the Beast. She would go on to be Tony-nominated for the 1994 stage version, the studio’s first foray into adapting an animated feature into a Broadway show.

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What was the first Disney animated feature that you remember seeing in a theater?

I think it was Bambi. It really sticks out for me because it has the most heart-wrenching moment ever — it’s never been topped. The death of Bambi’s mother killed me. I do think Disney films have such a powerful reach, one that speaks to people all over the world, generation after generation after generation. The world is a different place. We as women came through a revolution. We are not the same as we were then. These new films speak to today’s generation but still have reverence for the past.

What do you think of the astonishing success of Frozen, whose plot has some similarities with Maleficent, with its redefining of what true love is and whose core relationship is between two women?

It’s wonderful. I’m so thrilled that these movies with female protagonists are blowing the top off the box office. There is a sea change for female characters, from the lead character in Divergent to Katniss from The Hunger Games. I’m no longer stuck in a little ghetto. These films have a broad reach and make money. They used to think boys don’t go to female movies and that is wrong.

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You have become an expert in knowing how to re-invent fairy tales for contemporary tastes and attitudes without losing the essence that have made them endure so long. What is your secret?

You have to look at the story and ask, ‘What are the icons?’ You need the rose in Beauty and the Beast. You have to have Aurora prick her finger on a spinning wheel and go away for 16 years. You find those and work around them through the point of view of the protagonist.

Here is a trailer for Maleficent:

For the rest of the interview, go here.

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