When it came for producer Don Hahn and his collaborators to create a film based on the "Sleeping Beauty" villain "Maleficent," the artists decided to quite literally go back to the drawing board. But instead of creating something new, the group mined their inspiration from the existing drawings of Mark Davis, the legendary Disney animator who so vibrantly brought Maleficent to life in 1959.
"All of us, from Robert Stromberg to the art department, we started the movie by going to Disney's Animation Research Library's archives and pulling out all of the 'Sleeping Beauty' drawings," Hahn told me in a recent interview. "It was our first day, and there was a sense of, 'We're going to make our own movie and not copy 'Sleeping Beauty,' but we're going to have a foundation to look at and be able to build off of. "
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The interesting thing about Maleficent, Hahn pointed out, is that she was created exclusively for Disney's animated version of "Sleeping Beauty."
"The character of Maleficent wasn't in any of the original fairy tales, so Walt Disney, Mark Davis and others came up with the idea of her. What a gift for us," Hahn said, humbly. "She's an incredible villain, probably one of the most popular villains of all time in Disney's lexicon of films, but she doesn't have a back story, and we can make it up."
The live action version of "Maleficent," which stars Angelina Jolie in the title role and Elle Fanning as the Sleeping Beauty, Aurora, makes its debut on DVD and Blu-ray (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment) Tuesday.
Hahn said the light bulb to give Maleficent her own story went off more than 10 years ago in a meeting with Disney's animation department, as they were all mulling over possibilities of fleshing out existing characters in the Disney canon.
"It was about 2003, maybe, when were sitting around one day, asking, 'Who is a really strong and interesting female character we can base a movie on,' and somebody said 'Maleficent,' but I can't point out exactly who it was," Hahn recalled. "It made sense, because she was this really popular villainess who is glamorous and like a runway model. Still, she's been wounded somehow in the past."
The timing of the idea was largely inspired by the Broadway smash, "Wicked," which delved into the history of the witch sisters from "The Wizard of Oz," Hahn said.
"We thought we could do a 'Wicked' thing with Maleficent and show her back story. That was just the germ of the idea and it sat in animation for a while," Hahn said. "We did some development and some drawings on it, but then it went pretty quickly over to live-action, where it sat."
Eventually helping "Maleficent" along in its live-action ambitions was the blockbuster success of director Tim Burton's vibrant, colorful live-action opus "Alice in Wonderland," which gave somewhat of an alternate take on the time-honored tale-turned Disney animated classic.
Hahn said the first person he pitched "Maleficent" to was Burton, along with another film that gave Burton a chance to revisit a bit of his own filmmaking past.
"I had two movies to pitch to him in his cutting room in London," Hahn said. "One of them was 'Frankenweenie' and he said, 'That's great, we have to do this,' and for the other, I had a single Mark Davis drawing of Maleficent in my brief case and I held it up and said, 'Walt Disney's Maleficent.' That was the entire pitch and Tim said, 'Give me that,' and he put it up on a wall with a push pin and said, 'Let's do it.' Since Linda Wolverton just collaborated with him on 'Alice,' I asked him about her and he said, 'Great.'"
After Wolverton boarded the project, the creative team started started "sitting down and knocking around some back stories and got some drafts done," Hahn said, but Burton eventually had to bow out because of commitments to other films.
Luckily, Wolverton was able to stay on project, Hahn said, and add "gravitas and weight of the story." Eventually, Joe Roth, another producer on "Maleficent" who also produced the live-action versions of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Oz the Great and Powerful," felt it was time to give Stromberg his shot at the director's chair. After all, Stromberg was the production designer of both "Alice" and "Oz," and was familiar to the creative team.
"Joe really wanted to give a break to Robert Stromberg and Tim supported that," Hahn said. "Robert was ready and everybody knew each other, so there was like a camaraderie and trust between us all."
Hahn said he really knew Maleficent would take wing when Jolie got involved, which was early on in the process. The great part about it, Hahn added, was that Jolie wasn't involved merely as an actress, but as a seasoned collaborator.
"You get so much from her. She's a fashion designer, she's a makeup person, she's a writer and director, so you're getting this life force when you bring Angelina onto a project," Hahn said.
Hahn said the production team was mesmerized by Jolie's presence, and her creative approach to the production raised the quality of the film to a whole new level.
"The thing that really surprised me most about her performance is the restraint. In other hands, it might have been broader and more melodramatic with cape swirling and mustache twirling, but Angelina really holds back," Hah said in admiration. "She really peels back the layers of the onion to let you see inside her. There are scenes like where she sees Aurora from afar and realizes she's really done something horrible thing by cursing her, those are insights -- little wedges in the door -- and the way Angelina reveals those things are exquisite."