The Challenges Of Making 'Into The Woods'

22 December 2014 | 1:45 pm | Guy Davis

"I wanted to be as faithful as we could be."

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s much-loved musical, Into The Woods, puts a subversive twist of some of your favourite fairytale traditions – here, Prince Charming is a bit of a player, the Big Bad Wolf is something of a perv and the definition of ‘happily ever after’ has a bittersweet tinge – but for director Rob Marshall, who brought the show to the big screen, it was the warmer aspects that appealed. “I saw the original production on Broadway in 1987,” says Marshall, an acclaimed theatre director and choreographer who made the transition to film with 2002’s Oscar-winning Chicago. “I loved it immediately – the wonder, the magic, the humour, the cleverness and above all the profound nature of the piece. I thought it had incredible messages about the parent-child relationship, the desire not to repeat the mistakes of the past, the consequences of wishes and the need to move forward through loss. It was all very layered to me.”
“I loved it immediately – the wonder, the magic, the humour, the cleverness and above all the profound nature of the piece."

After his success with Chicago, Marshall meet with Sondheim to talk about the possibility of turning one of the legendary composer’s musicals into a movie. “And when we spoke about Into The Woods, he said he thought it would be a wonderful piece for me to work on. And that stayed with me.” Sondheim and Lapine had one request, however. If Marshall took it on, he had to actually get it made. “It’s been sitting out there for so many years but nothing really happened. I promised them I would get it made, so that’s one thing I was able to follow through on!”

Marshall was also able to cast it with a stellar line-up – including Johnny Depp, The Devil Wears Prada’s Emily Blunt, Star Trek’s Chris Pine and the one and only and fellow Prada’n, Meryl Streep. “The first person I asked was Meryl,” Marshall admits. “And when she said yes, that was a dream come true. When it came to the rest of the cast, not only wanting to be part of a musical but also part of a company that includes Meryl Streep is incredibly enticing. So I had a plethora of choices.”

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Still, the project wasn’t without its challenges, foremost among them ensuring that what worked on stage would translate to the screen while giving the film version its own distinct personality. “One of the reasons I asked Steve and James to work with me on this film was because I really wanted that true voice there. I wanted to be as faithful as we could be. But I was pleasantly surprised that both of them were so incredibly flexible. It’s a mark of real collaborators, showing an understanding that something needs to be thought of in a new way. It gave me a great deal of reassurance. There were actually times I found myself holding onto the original material with a tighter hold than they did. So the balance was a challenge but it was also a joy, seeing something come together in a new way.”