Disney’s Maleficent is poised to kick off a series of live-action adaptations of the studio’s classic cartoons (to be followed by Cinderella and Cruella), but it appears that the studio still has some tweaking to do on the Sleeping Beauty redo.  Robert Stromberg, who won two Oscars as the production designer of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, makes his directorial debut on Maleficent, which finds Angelina Jolie playing the title role.  The pic tells the Sleeping Beauty story from the point of view of the villain, and it’s a pretty major film on which to cut one’s teeth as a feature film director.

The Mouse House is going back to do some reshoots in order to rework the film's opening scenes, and though Stromberg will be directing, Disney is bringing in The Blind Side and The Alamo director John Lee Hancock to oversee the additional filming.  Hit the jump for more.

The folks over at Heat Vision report that Hancock has been brought in to write some new scenes to open the film and will be onhand to help oversee the reshoots for the $200 million fantasy pic.  Producer Joe Roth explained his involvement thusly:

“We asked him to be on set.  He’s not directing.  He wrote pages and I hired a first-time director and it’s good to have him on set.”

Roth went on to note that the last 75 minutes of the film are “really entertaining,” but there are issues with the opening so it’s being reshot over eight days.  The new scenes do not involve Jolie, who is busy directing Unbroken in Australia.

Reshoots are pretty typical nowadays on big studio films (Peter Jackson added an entire new movie to The Hobbit adaptation with his “pick-ups”), and it’s not surprising that Disney would want to bring an experienced filmmaker in to help Stromberg should the first-time filmmaker need assistance.  Interestingly, Hancock has a Disney film of his own opening soon as he directed Saving Mr. Banks, which is scheduled to hit theaters this Christmas.  Maleficent is slated to open on May 30, 2014.