The latest in Disney’s series of animated-to-live-action adaptations hits theaters later this month by way of Maleficent, but the studio already has another update of a beloved classic in the can: Cinderella.  The film was in development for years and initially had Mark Romanek (Never Let Me Go) attached as director, but when he fell off, Disney signed Kenneth Branagh to take the helm.  The cast is led by Lily James (Downton Abbey) in the lead role with Cate Blanchett as the evil stepmother and Game of Thrones’ King of the North Richard Madden as the prince, making for quite a promising pedigree.

While speaking with writer/producer Simon Kinberg in anticipation of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Steve also asked Kinberg about Cinderella, which he produced.  Kinberg described the live-action take as “very loyal” to the 1950 animated film, but also noted that the pic has some twists and changes to keep things interesting.  Read on after the jump.

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While speaking with Steve, Kinberg said that this new iteration of Cinderella doesn’t depart too heavily from the source material:

“It’s very loyal to the original movie, there’s some twists and changes but it takes a lot from the original animated, from the [Charles] Perrault, and from the Grimm stories.  It’s a more dramatic version, but it’s got so much heart and sweetness and fun and magic to it; I mean Ken [Branagh] did a really incredible job, and the actors are ridiculous.”

It certainly sounds as though this will be a lighter fairy tale adaptation than other recent redos like Snow White and the Huntsman, though original director Mark Romanek’s version of Cinderella was a tad darker.  Kinberg touched briefly on the history of the project, running down how it came to its final incarnation:

“I have seen a rough cut and it’s great, Ken did an amazing job.  It was something that the original writer, Aline Brosh McKenna, and I brought to Disney saying ‘You guys should do a live-action version of this, are you doing a live-action version?’ we sort of had a take.  She wrote drafts of that script, at a certain point it was going to be a different director, he fell off, [and] Chris Weitz came in and did like a new version of what the movie was gonna be.”

Kinberg added that there will be a teaser trailer for the film, but he doesn’t know when it will be released.  The pic doesn’t hit theaters until March 13, 2015, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a very brief teaser attached to Maleficent later this month.

Watch the portion of the video interview with Kinberg concerning Cinderella below:

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Here's more with Simon Kinberg:

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