Trachtenberg Heads to the House of Mouse
Dan Trachtenberg — the filmmaker behind 10 Cloverfield Lane, a handful of The Boys episodes and some recent Predator installments — has signed on to direct a fresh take on Sleeping Beauty for Disney. It’s early days and the film doesn’t have a title yet, but Disney is backing the project.
Not a Rehash of Maleficent
Don’t expect a Maleficent sequel redux. This won’t be a remake of the classic fairy tale either. Instead, Trachtenberg and co-creator Rayna McClendon cooked up an original story that’s inspired by Sleeping Beauty’s bones but aims to go its own way.
Who’s Writing and Producing?
Writers Alex Anfanger and Dan Schimpf (think Big Time in Hollywood, FL) are turning that seed idea into a full screenplay. Trachtenberg will also produce alongside Ben Rosenblatt and Michelle Rejwan, so it looks like he’ll be steering this ship from both the director’s chair and the producer’s table.
Meanwhile: Freddy the 13th Is Coming
This isn’t his next immediate project, though. He’s currently knee-deep in pre-production on an animated feature called Freddy the 13th, based on Yehudi Mercado’s comic. Picture a goofy-family-meets-horror setup: Uncle Freddy accidentally bumps off the local Boogeyman while babysitting and ends up with a cursed set of supernatural responsibilities.
Freddy’s Vibe — Family-Friendly Frights
Paramount Animation is backing Freddy, which Trachtenberg describes as a scares-and-laughs-for-all-ages movie — a departure from some of his darker live-action work. It’s scheduled to hit U.S. theaters on October 13, 2028, so mark your calendars if you like your spooky with a side of silly.
What This Sleeping Beauty Could Be
Because the Disney Sleeping Beauty project is still in the concept stage, we don’t know yet whether it will skew family-friendly like Freddy or lean into something moodier. Given Trachtenberg’s taste for genre-mixing, it could land anywhere between whimsical and slightly twisted — and that uncertainty is kind of the fun part.
The Bottom Line
Disney handed a promising storyteller a familiar fairy tale and told him to play. Expect a reinvention rather than a retread, a quirky take rather than a straight-up remake — and keep an eye on casting and vibes as this one starts to take shape.