Tim Burton setting up Maleficent?

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Director Tim Burton has been rumored for a few months now to be eying a feature film about Maleficent, the shape-shifting villainess of Disney's animated classic Sleeping Beauty, and now comes the first official news on the project.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Burton's Alice in Wonderland screenwriter Linda Woolverton has been hired to script Maleficent. "It is unclear just how dark and edgy Disney -- which had no comment on the project -- wants to make Maleficent," the trade reports. "The dragon scenes in the 1959 feature, for example, are notable for their intensity. But if any filmmaker has a successful track record of making the dark and weird work for families, it's Burton."

THR adds that no deal is in place yet for Burton to direct Maleficent, and that he's considering a number of projects as his follow-up to his blockbuster Alice in Wonderland.

Disney reminds us that, in Sleeping Beauty, the "evil fairy Maleficent is responsible for all misfortune that befalls Stefan's kingdom; even the merest killing frost bears her mark. So when only the good fairies are invited to bestow gifts upon the newborn princess Aurora, the slighted sorceress arrives in a thunderclap to bestow her own 'gift.' 'Before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, she shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die.'"