For a film adaptation of a popular Broadway musical, the trailers and promos for Into the Woods have been pretty light on signing. Now we have a new trailer from Disney which is finally selling the movie as a full on musical.
The trailer was released on the Disney Movie Trailers YouTube channel this morning and features some more footage from the film as well as a few of the songs. In particular the trailer ends with Meryl Streep singing “Stay With Me,” sung by the Witch to Rapunzel. The trailer also features the "into the woods" refrain from the prologue of the show.
An article in Vanity Fair this week pointed out how Into the Woods has been oddly quiet about the fact that it's a musical. The initial trailer for the movie features no indication that the film has any singing in it at all, and it wasn't until Disney released a featurette last week that we heard any of the cast sing.
But this new trailer from Disney is no longing hiding this fact, clearly selling itself as a musical and focusing on the singing.
Into the Woods, based on the Stephen Sondheim musical, blends together characters from a bunch of different classic fairy tales including Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. The film adaptation stars James Corden, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp.
The film is directed by Rob Marshall, who told Entertainment Weekly that he didn't want the film to look like a cartoon world, trying to get across a sense of danger.
Despite this, there's been some controversy that Disney may be censoring the film and trying to make it more family friendly. However, Sondheim has called the movie a faithful adaptation, and director Rob Marshall said fans should not worry about the movie being any less dark, according to Entertainment Weekly. He did however confirm the rumor that Rapunzel's storyline will not end the same way it does in the original play, one change that was rumored to make the movie less dark.
Director Rob Marshall previously directed the film adaptation of Chicago, which won Best Picture in 2003. This, in addition to the great cast, makes Into the Woods a serious contender for the Oscars this year if Marshall is able to pull it off.
Into the Woods will open in theaters on December 25th.
image courtesy of ACE/INFphoto.com