With Disney planning a new take on classic tale The Nutcracker, director Lasse Hallstrom is busy hiring the people he needs for the cast. Mackenzie Foy was recently locked in to play the lead, and he's just added Keira Knightley to play the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Originally written by E.T.A. Hoffman in 1816 as a story called The Nutcracker And The Mouse King and famously turned into a hugely successful ballet by Tchaikovsky, the basic plot follows a young girl named Clara (Foy) who receives a nutcracker doll from her godfather one Christmas Eve. Seized with the need to see her present as the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Day, she's transported into a fantastical world rent asunder by a conflict between gingerbread soldiers and an army of mice.
In the 1892 ballet, the Sugar Plum fairy is ruling the Land of Sweets in place of the Prince, who had been transformed into the Nutcracker by a spell. We're betting she'll have a little more to do in the new movie. Ashleigh Powell wrote the script (which goes by the full name The Nutcracker And The Four Realms), and the film also boasts the skills of ballerina Misty Copeland and Morgan Freeman.
Knightley was last on our screens in Everest and will return in Collateral Beauty, which is out here on December 30.