Stardust
The ensemble cast, which includes Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro, are under the spell of Neil Gaiman's spectral fantasy.
By Mark Salisbury
Starring: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller, and Robert De Niro
Director: Matthew Vaughn
(Paramount, due March 16, 2007)
After writer-director Vaughn (Layer Cake) bailed on X3, he went on a three-week vacation, during which he knocked out a draft of a screenplay, an adaptation of his friend Neil Gaiman's fantasy story Stardust. "From the first day of me writing the first page of the script to being green-lit, I think was ten weeks," he says.
The $79 million fairy-tale adventure tells of Tristian (Cox), a young man from a small English village who in an attempt to secure the hand of local beauty Victoria (Miller) must travel to the enchanted realm of Faerie and return with a fallen star in human form (Danes). En route, he meets a wicked witch (Pfeiffer), a pirate (De Niro), warring princes, and ghosts.
"I call it the nonfantasy fantasy film. I've tried to ground it in reality as much as possible so it doesn't feel too alien, so you can relate to it," says Vaughn. "I'm a huge fan of Roald Dahl, and when he wrote for kids, he wrote in a way that was a bit scary, a bit funny, a little bit risqué — and that's what this is."
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Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.