JA from MNPP here - back at the start of December we took a look at the news that Never Let Me Go and One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek had supposedly set his sights on reimagining Cinderella live-action-style for Disney, with Saoirsie Ronan maybe stepping into the glass slippers, and Cate Blanchett playing the villainous Stepmother. To me this certainly seemed an odd fit for him and I said at the time that, knowing his sordid history with the studio system (woe be The Wolf Man production), I wasn't sure why he was tossing himself back into the belly of the beast.
Well maybe he finally sat down and watched Tarsem's Mirror Mirror because sure enough, cut to a month or so later and he's dropped out of the project because of "differing views on how to tell the story." I guess Disney wasn't keen on having Gus the singing mouse reenact the video for "Closer."
Chris Weitz (About a Boy) wrote the script so my guess is, if he's keen to direct something big like this after the Golden Compass semi-debacle, he's got a shot at the gig, or they'll just hire some boring director-for-hire... but for a moment let's pretend we work at Disney (close your eyes and feel the felt mouse-ears cap on your head, I know you can do it) and it's our job to find the perfect director for a live-action Cinderella. Who do you hire? Imagine what someone with real vision could do --- what would David Cronenberg make that pumpkin carriage look like? Or the scene with the slippers! He'd go all old-school Grimm on it with the foot-goring. Sigh, I dream too big.