I’m excited! Disney is now in India, for realsies, and I love the classic Disney fairy tales for their strong central female characters. Time for an imaginary rewrite!
Snow White
Corporate espionage! In Dubai! Our poor little rich girl, in flashback, is established as having a loving kind father who raised her, and then her stepmother showed up, was a bit cold but not cruel, until her father died. At which point her stepmother started isolating her from the world completely “for her own good”. Including cutting her off from her childhood best friend, the son of her father’s best friend/business rival. Years later, the son of the best friend/business rival comes to meet with the stepmother and is suspicious about Snow White being no where to be seen. He pretends everything is fine, but after the meeting, he sends his car off without him in it so the Stepmother will think he left the house, but secretly stays back and hunts for Snow White, until he finds her in their favorite hide out from childhood. She is surprised and scared, because she isn’t supposed to talk to strangers, so he lies that he is just a servant, the new gardener.
He keeps sneaking in and talking to her, not only are they falling in love, he is getting evidence of just how much her stepmother mentally abuses her. He gently starts moving towards revealing his true identity, saying that he is only working as a gardener until he can find a better job with his business degree, then that he has the better job but is staying on as gardener to see her, and finally asking her to elope with him, he can take care of her, she just has to trust him. But the stepmother has heard about Snow White meeting in secret with a boy. What Snow White doesn’t know is that her father left his company to her with the stepmother to run it until she marries or turns 30. The stepmother is terrified she will marry and so hatches an evil plan. She will have her killed, and lie to everyone that she is still alive just suffering from her crippling shyness and unable to meet people, as usual.
The stepmother goes to a local gangster and hires him to do it. But, when he is about to kill her, she begs for her life so pitifully he can’t. He tells her he won’t kill her, but she has to swear never to return home or communicate with anyone from her old life, she swears and says she doesn’t want that old life anyway, anything would be better than that. The gangster takes her at her word and brings her to boarding house where a bunch of guest workers live to act as their housekeeper. The men are mostly middle-aged married men with families, and a couple of young teenagers, no one as a viable romantic prospect. The teenagers get crushes on her, the middle-aged men see her as a daughter, she flourishes with their affection.
Meanwhile, her “prince” is looking for her. When she didn’t show up at the appointed time for the elopement, he got suspicious and started putting on pressure in his Businessman guise, having his lawyers insist on Snow White appearing to ratify the merger agreement, or else it was null and void and instead his company would try for a hostile take over. The stepmother is scrambling now, she manages to get a clue that Snow White is still alive and was taken to the guest worker district and starts hunting for her. She no longer trusts anyone else to work for her, so she goes in disguise and looks herself. At the same time, Snow White has confessed her love story to her “dwarves”, and they have determined that it is their responsibility as her “family” to track down this groom. But none of the clues work, the business college he gave the name of has never heard of him, there is no small apartment like he described at the address he gave (just a huge mansion), and so on. Luckily, the Prince was smart and left word to be alerted immediately if someone asked HR for the fake name he gave. He rushes down expecting to see Snow White, and instead sees some older rough looking workers. He follows them, they notice him following, fight scene! Followed by explanations. After much humor and tough love, the dwarves decide he is good enough for their Snow White and happily plan to surprise her with a wedding that Saturday.
And that is their downfall, for the wedding they go and buy her favorite expensive sweet as a surprise, and that tips off the Stepmother. She pretends to be the delivery woman and poisons the sweets and gives them to Snow White, he takes a bite and faints. Much agony when everyone comes home to find her fainted in the middle of the wedding decorations. Agony, upset, they have to get her to the hospital and an ambulance can’t fit through their lanes, the Prince finds them struggling to carry her through the streets and immediately reveals his true identity and declares he will take her to the best hospital in the city, they hand her to him, and she wakes up! And reveals she was just faking the whole time. She recognized her stepmother, because she’s not stupid, and only pretended to eat the sweet. But from what the stepmother said, she suddenly became afraid she was being watched, she was putting her friends in danger by being alive. She planned to continue to play dead and then disappear from the hospital, saving them all. Until she heard the Prince say he was really the Prince and understood that he had the power to protect them from anything her stepmother might do.
Big happy wedding, intercut with the Prince starting legal proceedings to merge their two companies, the stepmother is arrested thanks to the evidence of the poisoned sweets Snow White kept, the gangster is hired as “head of security” for the new company, and the Dwarves are sent home to their families with enough money that they will never have to work overseas again.
Okay, what do you think? What other Disney movie should I try? Is Cinderella worth a remake?
dontcallitbollywood 
oooh this is good! Although I’d love it if she really did eat the sweet, just because I like the idea of an adaptation where the heroine can be sweet, naive, and still know how to survive.
Cinderella would be lovely, but not with a shoe. Hmmmm, what would it be? My first instinct was that she leaves her bra behind after a ~~ steamy ~~ night, but that’s not Cinderella-ish. An earring, maybe, that’s handed down from her mother, so it HAS to be one of a kind. And her mother was one of those small-time jewelry makers/artisans you find in small corners of Delhi/Rajasthan etc.
Her stepmother is the exact opposite, a big-store person, someone her father remarried to kind of carry on his ex-wife’s designs into the public eye, and she knew that, so any hint that Cinderella (Chinmayee?) still loves her mom and treasures her memories still makes her insecure about her place in the household and her husband’s and step-daughters’ hearts, making her turn cold and bitter over time, and leading to her having certain times when she lashes out and breaks her “competitor’s” designs, deems them unfit for selling, and hopes that Cinderella will see her as a modern, career-focussed role model instead, but it just never happens.
ALSO! Her store slowly is failing, as the public changes and no longer wants the Western designs as much, but instead of pivoting, she thinks her designs are no longer “modern” enough and sinks in more and more money to make them more outlandish, instead of traditional.
What would the ball be? A business-y/networking event for small businesses that A Big Chain throws in order to gather the best talent and obviously, Stepmother doesn’t want Cinderella going there and thus prevents her. Who breaks her out/who is the fairy godmother? Her mom’s old coworker who Cinderella thought had betrayed her because she now works for Stepmother, but who was trying to work from the inside and seeing that it wasn’t working, finally saw her chance to bring Mother’s designs to the public through Cinderella?
What else, what else. The Prince, aha! I kind of want it to be a Princess, for no reason, just because. She’s more mission-driven than her father, wants to give back to the community, rather than focus only on Western designs (and also sees a good business opportunity), and do it in a smart way. That’s partly why she falls for Cinderella, seeing her passion for the same mission, and her story and just _seeing_ how well they could work together. Cinderella has some stumbling blocks, because she thinks all “modern” women are like her stepmother, but she comes around as they talk and meet secretly and then later, over all those meetings as they bring her mother’s designs to light (and later, Cinderella’s as well, but that comes later).
How does Cinderella stand out. Why her, amongst all those other women/struggling small artisans? Clothing is too simple. Maybe she imitates Sita/Draupadi at the first meet in her clothing? But that’s still clothing based. Something to do with Art, but not highbrow art, just simple, nothing at all to do with wealth. I can’t think of anything right now, but it’ll come.
Anyway, Princess is attracted, they talk, they meet. she runs away, leaving behind the earring. Princess tracks her down, partly to pursue the attraction, partly because she’s a smart woman who sees a good opportunity when it comes. Stepmother tries to destroy the other earring, but it doesn’t work. They meet, they recognize, and then we have a happily ever after, with an epilogue shot showing them working together then going home and flirting and tumbling into bed together.
Good, not good?
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I love your Cinderella ideas! How about this?
Cinderella, like you said, daughter of a traditional artisan who started up a small shop with the support of her husband. And there’s this tension because her mother was less educated and trained in the traditional work, and her Dad is the one who took that and turned it into a business. When her stepmother takes over, she denigrates the whole craftsmanship part of the business, sends it out to sweatshops to repeat the same designs over and over using machines, and dismisses Cinderella and her mother as uneducated villagers trapped in the past, because they knew the real original way to do the work. Cinderella is forced to work in the backroom making the “special orders” because her Mom taught her the authentic designs before she died, but Cinderella has no idea her work is being sold for millions, and her designs are being used as the basis for the machine made mass production.
Her Dad’s old business manager (now over worked and underpaid) stayed on because he loved the business and loves Cinderella. He is terrified the stepmother will fire him and cut off his access to Cinderella, so he can’t openly go against her. But he encourages Cinderella, and when he sees the news of an open meeting for artisans to bring their work to the big multinational store chain for consideration, he convinces Cinderella to go and helps steal clothes for her to wear, and a fancy car to arrive in and so on. At the first meeting, she makes an impression because she arrives in a stunning western/Indian mixture outfit, like a Rajasthani choli under a big shoulder jacket with tight jeans. She and the daughter of the chain owner immediately hit it off, there’s romantic and business and friendship chemistry. They start secretly texting and calling on a phone the business manager helps her get. And then they are set to meet again at a big showcase for designs, including one of her designs, and she almost doesn’t make it but finally manages to sneak out of the house in an old outfit her mother had designed and made by hand. It’s stunning, her work is a major success, her stepmother is there so she keeps the veil half over her face and so on and no one recognizes her. She tries to leave early, but the daughter chases after her and insists on her coming home with her for a drink to celebrate her success. The end up making out, and then having sex, and Cinderella leaves her Choli behind when she flees the next morning just wearing a t-shirt instead.
She successfully sneaks back home, but somehow her stepmother figures out what she did. She threatens to have the business manager arrested for borrowing the work car and stealing the clothes Cinderella wore. She is trapped, can’t contact the daughter again or try to reclaim her designs or anything without putting her business manager friend at risk. But the daughter is looking for her, sends out her people to try to match the design on the choli with designs in all other shops and eventually narrows it down to Cinderella and the stepmother. The stepmother tries to convince her they are her designs, but the daughter doesn’t believe it. she goes in undercover and commissions a special made product, knowing Cinderella will be the one to make it, and Cinderella is able to put a message in the pattern so the Daughter figures out what is happening. Police called, lawyers called, truth that Cinderella actually inherited everything and Stepmother stole it comes out. And then happy ending you describe, Daughter and Cinderella fooling around and smiley and happy.
On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 1:39 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Oof, I love it!
I would want the fairy godmother to be female, just because the whole storyline would be this very cool ‘women helping women’ idea, that is rarely seen in media. Not just casual friendships, but actively helping, à la Veere di Wedding and Aisha (yes, I know everyone hates it, but honestly, it’s one of my favorite movies and literally changed my life). It also adds in the idea of women having complicated relationships with each other, when you include the stepmother, because she’s always thinking about what the original mother had that she doesn’t, when to the world she has the world at her feet.
What I would love in the mixed outfit, is that the manager got bits and pieces for her, but couldn’t manage a whole outfit, so it is in fact an odd mish-mash of garments that just WORKS for some reason, because Cinderella uses her traditional feminine skills to add an accessory here, a twist in her hair there, and it all comes together, even though the clothes are a bit faded (also, what if Cinderella is actually super shy about showing herself off? I’m not sure if that would be a good addition or not. So say the manager can only manage a strapless shirt from the early 2000s (when they were all the rage) and Cinderella ends up using a tie-dye dupatta as a makeshift belted coat to hide her shoulders.)
Also, she goes because she wants to learn, she wants to see if there’s anyway to carry on that legacy of her mother’s, if there’s any space for it in the market, not to nab herself the princess. And as she’s looking at some of the designs, she finds herself taking notes, muttering a little here and there, until Princess sees them from the corner of her eye and slowly begins to follow Cinderella around to eavesdrop on her mutterings, while Cinderella barely notices (and in fact, might not actually know who the Princess is) because she’s so absorbed in her work and thinking of her mother and her community.
Additionally. Not sex, just second base. I think it could be too much like BBB here, where the sex isn’t necessary and might actually be out of character. But they stop and talk the rest of the night, because even as they make out, it’s this flow of both sexual and creative ideas and at some point, they reach a natural stopping point for both and creative ideas lead to more discussions about themselves, but face to face.I like the idea also of Cinderella finding it hard to trust the Princess, which is something they could discuss, have a small argument about it and agree to work on it “later”, implying that there will definitely be a later.
Now, why would the dad marry the stepmother? Does he actually love her? Is it a business partnership? What’s going on there? Because I want to believe that he loves both Cinderella’s mom and Stepmother, just because they appeal to two different sides of him and he’s constantly torn and conflicted between those two and it shows. So sometimes he’ll turn on Cinderella and sometimes he’ll back her up, but either way, he’s not a presence either woman can rely on, making him effectively disappear from their lives and making this, again, a very woman-centric story. He’s still alive, just…not there. Even when he speaks, we can see the two women just dismissing him from their minds, because they know he’ll change his mind immediately.
What else, what else. The above removes the inheritance and lawyer idea, but how about Cinderella employs Stepmother to manage her mother’s store, or one like it? It’s a punishment, as well as a small step towards reconciliation, as well as personal growth for stepmother, who we see slowly comes to enjoy interacting with people as people, not just workers. Again, she’s not exactly cruel, but she is in pain and lashes out whenever and wherever and this helps her heal.
(maybe a second chance at love with a customer who keeps stopping by to buy useless trinkets just to have an excuse to talk to her?)
(also, my brain conjured up the old brick Nokia phone as being the only phone Cinderella could get and stepmother just CAN’T break it, so makes Cinderella text Princess to say she doesn’t like her anymore, which just does not work.)
And business manager comes to work directly with Cinderella on employing good workers!
I just want a happy ending for everybody!
(well, nothing for the dad yet. Maybe he just retires to the forest.)
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Oh wait, I forgot to mention, the Princess decides to tease Cinderella when they first meet, by playfully disagreeing with one of her ideas and is just so utterly CHARMED by her passion and her defense that she introduces herself properly and they just talk and talk and talk and go through the rest of the exhibition together.
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Okay, fairy godmother is female, the old accountant/manager for the business who used to give Cinderella a sweet when she came into the shop to visit her parents in the Happy Old Times.
Her father always worshipped her mother and felt he couldn’t live up to her, after she died the shop started to fail, and in desperation he marred the Stepmother to get the infusion of money to save the business. The Stepmother was an older woman who was kind of hard and cold and her parents were ready to give her a big dowry. The father married her purely for the money, but pretended he liked her (not like he woo’d her, but in the pre-wedding meetings he was flattering). After marriage, he passive aggressively made clear that his sweet beautiful perfect first wife was his true love and he just married again for money. Plus, he never even told her he had a daughter, just sprung Cinderella on her post-marriage. Stepmother turned hard at this and decided if it was a business deal for him, it was for her too. Her dowry saved the shop so she was going to take over running it. She came up with the idea of mass producing their designs, rebranding as an exclusive shop, and so on and so forth. Stepmother buried her feelings by treating everything as business, making clear to Father that his only worth was in giving her a business to take over, ignoring Cinderella entirely until she discovered some handiwork of hers as a teenager and then hiring her as an exclusive worker in the store. Heck, she even pays Cinderella a good salary, just isn’t willing to listen to her ideas because she sees it as HER business. Cinderella is more oppressed by her father than her stepmother. With her salary she could in theory move out and have an independent life, even go work for another store or start her own business, but her father and her memories of her mother keep her tied to the store. Oh! Maybe she is secretly saving up to start her own business, that’s why she goes to the handicrafts business expo hosted by Princess, so she can do research for her dream business plan when she has enough money.
Stepmother gets angry with her because the designs she made for the second event used materials from the shop and designs she had previous sold in part as exclusives to their customers. She thinks she is stealing from Stepmother’s business, that’s why she is so mad and makes her break all contact and all contracts with Princess. But in the end, she talks to Stepmother and says they don’t have to be emotional about it, they can sign a business agreement, Stepmother has poured her life into this store and is really good at what she does, she just has to let Cinderella have a little more control on her half of the business and they will both benefit. But a condition of the deal is that Stepmother signs divorce papers, from now on their only relationship is business.
I love the idea of the first meeting with the Princess and Cinderella, and I also pictured the Dad retiring to the forest! He just wants to lose himself in his memories of Cinderella’s mother, Cinderella can build him a little shrine somewhere to stay in. Also, the Nokia phone idea is genius.
Casting, I want Sayani Gupta from Fan and other stuff as the Princess
https://www.99images.com/photos/celebrities/sayani-gupta/sayani-gupta-hot-hd-photos-wallpapers-whatsapp-dp-1080p-awik.jpg?v=1587789311
And Sonam Kapoor as Cinderella
On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 4:41 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I love it and I support Sonam in everything. This is the perfect Cinderella.
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Especially playing someone very intense and serious about fashion!
On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 7:42 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Doc – Anupam Kher, duh. Maaaybe switch him and Anil
Bashful – Anil Kapoor
Grumpy – Saif Ali Khan
Sneezy – Abhishek Bachchan
Sleepy – The Guy Whose Name I Am Blanking On, on the right in the picture in the post
Happy – Boman Irani
Dopey – I dunno, Hrithik because I want to see him in a bit part being ridiculous
The gangster should be Sonu Sood, because he could pull off the ‘bad, scary dude who realizes that this is just a kid,’ and sets her up at the boarding house owned by his dad’s cousin (Doc).
Agreed that Aish is totally the stepmom, and Karisma Kapoor should play Snow White’s mom in any flashbacks that happen. Aish is ultra-modern but also rocks some super conservative words/actions where it concerns Snow White–no boys, no texting, have to be a good cook, and then always leaning heavily on ‘don’t you want to be a good wife someday, like your mother was for your father? what man would want such a useless girl,’ which SUPER twists Cinderella’s head around because when her mom was alive was the last time she was happy, was the last time she really saw her father happy.
BUT in flashbacks it’s shown that while Karisma was kind of old fashioned, she dreamed her daughter would be the best of both of her parents–and that her daughter would marry for love, after having a chance to see the world, ‘what is the point of all this money if you don’t do good with it, for yourself and everyone around you?’ kind of vibes.
Now for another fairy tale that needs the Indian movie treatment: Sleeping Beauty
I’m thinking Yami Gautam or Sonam Kapoor, maybe as Sleeping Beauty, and then Kajol, Juhi, and (pretty please, pretty please, pretty please) Jaya Bachchan as the 3 fairies. Maybe Rekha or Jackie Shroff as Maleficent? No idea who the prince would be, or Sleeping Beauty’s parents.
Basically SB’s parents didn’t make their mob payoffs or ratted on them or something, and the mobsters tell them that they’re going to kill Sleeping Beauty when she turns 16 (maybe they got a 15 year prison sentence? 20 and get out early for good behavior?). SB’s parents decide to ship her out to Bengal with one of the secretaries at their company (Juhi) who takes the baby home to her sister and her mom to raise. Jaya is the loving grandma, who wins over the locals to love her new ward/granddaughter as much as she does. Juhi is the practical one who was there when the mobsters made their threats–she is super careful, super strict about the rules, but is also a big softie. Kajol is the one who pushes for SB to have a normal life, to go to college, to meet boys, to put selfies on instagram, and is always there for SB when things don’t go right.
Then the mobsters get out of jail and it’s up to the 3 women to rescue their little Sleeping Beauty before something bad happens!
Or something…
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Yes to all your Snow White notes! Especially Sonu Sood.
Love the Sleeping Beauty idea. But we need to put in the Prince.
I want the Prince to be a new glasses wearing kind of out of his depth city kid. He’s recovering from some minor illness, so his rich city parents sent him to finish out the school year in this college in a little hill station. He’s the new kid in school, and he says something thoughtlessly insulting about their town compared to the city, so Sleeping Beauty and her friends decide to torture him. Lots of practical jokes and things until one of the jokes goes too far and she ends up having to rescue him when he falls in the river or something. And sees him without his glasses and realizes “oh wow! Without your glasses, you’re handsome!”. She starts to feel feelings, he surprises her by singing to her at the school dance, they are in love. But when his parents come to visit and he introduces them to her they go “wait, you look exactly like our old friend so-and-so, what’s happening?” This is enough to make Sleeping Beauty curious about her past again, but the Prince’s parents clam up and refuse to say any more, while also firmly forbidding their son from marrying this girl. the Prince rebels (the first time in his sweet good boy life) and declares he is going to stay at this funky college for the rest of the year, as planned, and he is not going to give up Sleeping Beauty. After his parents leave, Sleeping Beauty explains that her guardians have always refused to tell her any details of her parents, she thought they were dead. The Prince gets his research skillz ON and starts tracking down her parents, learns they are in jail, but that there was a controversy and a crusading reporter duo who tried to prove they were innocent. Those crusading reporters were….Juhi and Kajol! Sisters and co-anchors of a TV news show who failed in their efforts to stop SB’s parents from going to jail, and then retired. SB knew that the household income came from Juhi and Kajol writing stories for magazines and things, but had no idea they used to be famous and important.
SB with the help of the Prince lies to her guardians about a school trip, and instead the Prince takes her to the city for the first time. They stay at a cheap hotel and investigate the false crime and struggle to get permission to visit her parents in jail. Meanwhile, the evil Mobsters/Bad Fairy have picked up her trail. How about, her parents gave evidence which got the mobster’s evil evil son killed in a police shoot out, that’s why he can’t forgive or forget and promised that they would suffer the same pain as him, after raising their child with love, they would see her cut down. The mobsters attack her and the Prince, she defends herself (her guardians made her take a ton of self-defense classes and now she is a super good fighter), they keep unraveling the mystery, until finally she is kidnapped by the mobsters and put into a coma and kept in their penthouse apartment. The Prince and the guardians converge to rescue her. They can’t fight their way in, because she’s the best fighter, but they can trick their way in. Jaya pretends to be a poor old lady who faints in the lobby, distracting everyone. Juhi pretends to be a harried mother who needs help with the security code on the door because her hands are full. Kajol flirts her way into the apartment of the man downstairs. The Prince is let in by them once they are inside. The Prince offers himself as a substitute hostage to the guards, he is very very rich, they can call his parents for ransom, unlike SB who is going to make them no money because her parents have no power. All of this is so the Prince can give a shot of adrenoline to SB, which of course happens at the very last moment after Kajol and Jaya and Juhi hav ebeen found out and captured, and the Prince covers it by asking to kiss her (when really he is shooting adrenoline into her arm. SB finally wakes up, and fight-fight-fight, defeats all the mobsters before the Big Bad appears. she seemingly loses to the Big Bad, only it was all a trick, the Prince had arranged for a phone call to go straight to police headquarters, they head everything, and the Big Bad (who has pretended to be an innocent businessman this whole time) is arrested. SB’s parents are released from prison and get a house next door to her guardians, she and the Prince go back to finish college, Happy Ending.
And I want the Big Bad to be Tabu. angry mother of a dead son, going to any lengths to get vengeance on those she thinks killed him.
On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 10:13 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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OMG this is perfect!! Especially with regard to where her parents are and the mobster’s motivation! Yes!
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