Into the Woods is a 2014 American musical fantasy film directed by Rob Marshall, with a screenplay by James Lapine based on his and Stephen Sondheim's 1987 Broadway musical of the same name. Produced by Walt Disney Pictures, it features an ensemble cast, including Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Christine Baranski, and Johnny Depp. The film is centred on a childless couple who set out to end a curse placed on them by a vengeful witch, and the characters are forced to experience the consequences of their actions. It is inspired by the Grimm Brothers' fairy-tales of "Little Red Riding Hood", "Cinderella", "Jack and the Beanstalk", and "Rapunzel".
After several unsuccessful attempts by other studios and producers to adapt the musical to film, Disney announced in 2012 that it was producing an adaptation, with Marshall directing and John DeLuca serving as producer. Principal photography commenced in September 2013, and took place entirely in the United Kingdom, including at Shepperton Studios in London.
Into the Woods had its world premiere in New York City on December 8, 2014, and was released theatrically in the United States on December 25, 2014. It was commercially successful and received generally positive reviews, receiving praise for its acting performances (particularly Streep and Blunt), visual style, production values, and musical numbers, and criticism for its tone in the final act. Into the Woods was named one of the top-eleven best films of 2014 by the American Film Institute; the film received three Academy Award nominations, including a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Streep, and three Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
Plot
A Baker and his wife wish for a child but suffer under a curse laid upon their family by a Witch. The Witch had found the baker's father robbing her garden when his wife was pregnant, and demanded their baby in return. Because the Baker's father also stole her magic beans, the Witch's own mother punished her with the curse of age and ugliness. The Witch can lift the curse and allow the Baker and his wife to have a child only if they obtain four items for a potion to break her curse, to restore her youth and beauty: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold—none of which she is allowed to touch.
The Witch's demands bring the Baker and his wife into contact with Jack, who is selling his beloved cow, Milky-White, and to whom the Baker offers the Witch's stolen magic beans, found in his father's coat pocket. When Jack's Mother tosses the beans away, they grow into a huge beanstalk. The Baker and his wife also encounter Red Riding Hood, who had visited to buy from their bakery on her way to her grandmother's house, and notice her red cape. The blonde Rapunzel (the Witch's adopted daughter and Baker's biological sister), is observed by the Baker's wife letting her hair down for her Prince. Cinderella runs into the Baker's wife while fleeing her Prince and whose ball outfit includes gold slippers.
After a series of failed attempts and misadventures, the Baker and his wife are finally able to gather the necessary items. After the Witch regains her youth and beauty after drinking the potion, each of the characters receives a "happy ending". The Baker and his wife have a son; Cinderella marries the Prince; Rapunzel is freed from the Witch by the Prince's brother, whom she marries; Jack provides for his mother by stealing riches from the Giant in the sky, courtesy of the beanstalk, and kills the pursuing Giant by cutting down the beanstalk; and Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are saved from the Big Bad Wolf.
However, each of the characters learns that their endings don't remain happy: the Baker is worried that he is a poor father to his newborn baby; the Baker's wife lets the Prince temporarily seduce her; Cinderella is disenchanted by her cheating Prince; and the Witch lost her powers in exchange for her youth and beauty and is rejected by Rapunzel, who then runs off with her Prince. The growth of a second beanstalk from the last remaining magic bean allows the Giant's widow to climb down and threaten the kingdom if no one delivers Jack in retribution for killing her husband. The characters attempt to find and protect Jack. In the process, Red Riding Hood's mother and grandmother, as well as Jack's mother, are killed, and the Baker's wife is killed after she considers having an affair with Cinderella's Prince. The Baker, Cinderella, Jack and Red Riding Hood all blame each other for their actions that led to the tragedy, ultimately blaming the Witch for growing the beans in the first place. She curses them all for their inability to accept any responsibility, as well as their refusal to hand Jack over. Casting all the remaining beans away, the Witch begs her mother to punish her again, and she abandons the group by melting into a large pit of boiling tar.
The remaining characters resolve to kill the threatening Giant's widow, though they discuss the complicated morality of retribution and revenge in the process. They lure the Giant's widow into stepping in the tar pit, where she is attacked by Cinderella's birds and rocks slung by Jack and the Baker. She trips and falls, with a tree crushing her. With the Giant's widow dead, the characters move forward with their lives. The Baker, thinking of his wife, is determined to be a good father. Cinderella decides to leave her Prince and help the Baker with Jack and Red Riding Hood, who are now orphans and will be moving into the bakery. The Baker comforts his son by retelling the film's story, as it ends with the Witch's moral, where children will listen and learn from their parents' actions and behaviors.
Cast
Meryl Streep as Witch Emily Blunt as Baker's Wife James Corden as Baker Anna Kendrick as Cinderella Chris Pine as Cinderella's Prince Johnny Depp as Wolf Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood Daniel Huttlestone as Jack Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel's Prince MacKenzie Mauzy as Rapunzel Tracey Ullman as Jack's Mother Christine Baranski as Cinderella's Stepmother Tammy Blanchard as Florinda Lucy Punch as Lucinda Frances de la Tour as Giant Simon Russell Beale as Baker's Father Richard Glover as the Steward Joanna Riding as Cinderella's Mother Annette Crosbie as Granny Molly as Milky-White
Stage-to-screen changes
While it was initially reported that Disney had decided to make some major plot changes for the film version, Stephen Sondheim revealed that this was not the case and that any changes in the film version had been approved by him and James Lapine.
The film does differ from the stage production. The songs "I Guess This Is Goodbye", "Maybe They're Magic", "First Midnight" and "Second Midnight" interludes, "Ever After" (Act I finale of the original play), "So Happy", "Into the Woods" Reprise, "Agony" Reprise and "No More" (performed by the Baker) were cut from the film, although both "Ever After" and "No More" are used as instrumentals in the film. Meanwhile, many of the songs in the film have slightly different lyrics than their stage counterparts due to the tweaking of story lines.
Other changes include a major reduction of the significant role of the "mysterious man", who manipulates much of the action in the first act and is eventually revealed to be the Baker's father. Additionally, the character of the narrator was cut, and the film is instead narrated by the Baker. The minor role of Cinderella's father was cut; he is instead mentioned as deceased. Due to the film's compressed story line, Rapunzel's pregnancy is eliminated, as is the subplot where the two princes have affairs with Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. In the film, the Giant's wife first attacks during the marriages of Cinderella and Rapunzel to their respective princes; in the stage show, the Giant's wife first attacks the Witch's garden. Rapunzel's ultimate fate is also changed: rather than being killed by the Giant, she refuses to cooperate with the Witch and flees with her prince.
Production
Early development Early attempts to adapt Into the Woods to film occurred in the early 1990s, with a script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. A reading was held with a cast that included Robin Williams as the Baker, Goldie Hawn as the Baker's Wife, Cher as the Witch, Danny DeVito as the Giant, Steve Martin as the Wolf, and Roseanne as Jack's Mother. By 1991, Columbia Pictures and Jim Henson Productions were also developing a film adaptation with Craig Zadan as producer and Rob Minkoff as director. In 1997, Columbia put the film into turnaround, with Minkoff still attached as director, and Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, and Susan Sarandon reportedly in talks to star. After the report by Variety, a film adaptation of Into the Woods remained inactive for 15 years.
Disney development
After the critical and commercial success of Chicago in 2002, director Rob Marshall approached Sondheim with a proposal to adapt one of his musicals. Marshall was initially interested in adapting Follies and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sondheim suggested Into the Woods instead. Marshall concurred, but the project was postponed while he focused on directing Memoirs of a Geisha and Nine. In 2011, Marshall's interest in the project was rekindled when he heard a speech by President Barack Obama on the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks to the families of the victims, which seemed to evoke the same message as the musical's most important song, "No One Is Alone". Marshall firmly believed that Into the Woods was "a fairy-tale for the post-9/11 generation". In January 2012, he approached Walt Disney Pictures—for which he had just directed Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides—and pitched the idea to the studio, with Lapine writing the script and Sondheim "expected" to write new songs. Academy Award–winner Dion Beebe, who previously collaborated with Marshall on Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Nine, served as cinematographer. Sondheim confirmed that a new song had been written for the film in an April 2013 interview with The Independent.
With Disney's backing, a three-day reading of the entire updated screenplay took place in New York in October 2012 under Marshall's direction, with Nina Arianda as the Baker's Wife, Victoria Clark as Cinderella's Mother/Granny/Giant, James Corden as the Baker, Donna Murphy as the Witch, Christine Baranski as Cinderella's Stepmother, Tammy Blanchard as Florinda, Ivan Hernandez as the Wolf, Megan Hilty as Lucinda, Cheyenne Jackson as Rapunzel's Prince, Allison Janney as Jack's Mother, Anna Kendrick as Cinderella, Michael McGrath as Steward/Mysterious Man, Laura Osnes as Rapunzel, Taylor Trensch as Jack, Casey Whyland as Little Red Riding Hood, and Patrick Wilson as Cinderella's Prince. This reading convinced Walt Disney Studios president Sean Bailey to green-light the film despite ongoing concerns about the original musical's dark nature (which Disney executives had begun to understand since Marshall's original pitch). Disney (which self-finances all its films) provided only a relatively small production budget of $50 million (relative to other feature-length fantasy films on its development slate), in turn forcing both cast and crew to accept pay cuts to work on the film.
Reports surfaced in January 2013 that Meryl Streep had been cast as the Witch. Streep had instituted a personal "no witch" rule after she turned 40 and was offered three witch roles, but ultimately broke the rule to do a Sondheim role again; she had been in the original production of Sondheim's The Frogs as a student at Yale University. During the same month, it was reported that Janney had been confirmed to join the film, but five months later, Tracey Ullman was cast as Jack's Mother instead.