Cruella de Vil, the woman who has an obsession with dalmatians and uses their fur for coats. On April 7th, Walt Disney Studios released the official trailer for Cruella. It has been announced that Cruella will be exclusively on Disney Plus with premier access and in theaters and will be released on May 28th. The movie will be two hours long and is a dramedy movie.
Cruella stars Academy Award winner Emma Stone as Cruella de Vil. The movie will also star Academy Award winner Emma Thompson as Baroness von Hellman. The movie is said to be set in 1970’s London and follows Estella “Cruella” de Vil, an ambitious fashion designer. She later befriends a pair of young thieves and together they build a life for themselves on the streets of London. Cruella’s fashion designs catch Baroness von Hellman’s eye and Cruella must decide to embrace her wicked side or to play it safe. Cruella will be the second Disney live action remake to have a PG-13 rating and Mulan, being the first back in September.
Cruella seems to be a prequel of Cruella’s life before she became the obsessive woman of dalmation furs that we all know and love. With Walt Disney Studios making more live action remakes in the future, we can see that Disney will make prequels to villains that we love to hate. Since Maleficent came out back in 2014 and was a hit and got a sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, fans got to see the backstory of Maleficent and saw that she wasn’t evil to begin with. Maybe in the future, we will get to see the continuum of Cruella’s life story. There will also be many more upcoming live action remakes such as The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan in the near future.
In an interview with Total Film, director Craig Gillespie of Cruella, talks about how the movie has a cultural point of reference and how they bring a new twist to Cruella which is very different from the animated version of her.
“There are some really deep, emotional things that Cruella’s dealing with that send her to the villainous darker side. So in that sense it is similar,” said director, Craig Gillespie. “But it’s definitely its own thing. Just to sort of reframe Cruella, I thought it was important to show this darker side of her. But there’s going to be a lot of fun, a lot of humor in it.”
As a Disney fan, I am intrigued to see Cruella’s backstory because in the animated versions we only get to see the villain and we do not actually get to see what led them to be a villain. Hopefully in the future, Disney will make the backstories of other villains like Ursula, Hades, Mother Gothel, and even Captain Hook. I also like the live action remakes that Disney is doing because it is a very different perspective to see all the magic come to life but the animated versions will always be the better version.
Remember to mark your calendars because Cruella will exclusively be on Disney Plus with premier access and in theaters on May 28th.
