There’s a moment in the first trailer for Disney’s live action Cruella film when Emma Stone utters in a horrible, faux British accent: ‘I am a woman, hear my roar.’ It feels less like something Disney fans will remember from the iconic 101 Dalmatians villain, Cruella de Vil, and more like Jared Leto’s Joker who tells Batman, “We live in a society.”
That is, Disney found its own Joker character in Stone’s Cruella de Vil … but not necessarily in a good way.
Cruella takes place in the 1970s in London. Stone plays the villain who will soon become a kind of origin story. She is an aspiring punk designer – and a griffin – who tries to get the richest people in society to take notice of her and her designs. During the process, she becomes the infamous Cruella de Vil. (If that story sounds somewhat familiar, it could be because it’s apparently very similar to Jenny Humphrey’s bow in Gossip girl‘s second season.) The way Stone plays the villain also has hints from Joker and Harley Quinn, who lean into the “madness” of the character and dramatically increase everything.
Of course, this is just a trailer, and we’re all aware that movies are not always best represented by their trailers. Cruella can be a wonderful movie; we’ll just have to wait and see. However, Disney’s record with live action movies is relatively striking. The Lion King, Aladdin, and Mother-in-law and the Beast rose to more than $ 1 billion at the box office, but Dumbo Disney has lost a significant amount of change, and Mulan premiere with faint reviews. While Cruella was inspired by 101 Dalmatians, it is not a direct adjustment. Disney tried the same formula with Malicious: while the first film performs well, the sequel, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, underperform.
Cruella will be released on May 28th. Currently, it will appear in theaters, but as Disney CEO Bob Chapek remarked about the company’s recent earnings call, things could change with his theater page, depending on where the world is with the current pandemic. That means there is a chance Cruella could end up on Disney Plus instead of in theaters or with a theatrical release. If so, you can expect more information in the coming weeks.