For a while, Tim Burton was going to direct Maleficent, the topsy-turvy take on Sleeping Beauty that will refocus on the evil queen and let the docile blonde get on with sawing logs. Coming after Alice in Wonderland it would have been his second revision of an old Disney toon, as well as his second collaboration with screenwriter Linda Woolverton.

But Burton passed, and it was up to Angelina Jolie to keep the project afloat. She's been attached to star pretty much from day one, and still is. I can see why it's an attractive role - just like Cleopatra, who she may be playing soon for David Fincher, or the action heroine in a Luc Besson film, which Ms. Jolie also has on her dance card.

Deadline report that her new director on the film is to be Robert Stromberg, making his directorial debut. Recently, he served as a production designer on Avatar, Oz: The Great and Powerful and... Alice in Wonderland. He's also got over twenty years of FX credits under his belt, mainly in a visual design and matte painting capacity. In short: he's going to know a lot of ways to conjure up a fantasy world, and that's going to be a key skill set here.

I only hope he's also got the chops when it comes to staging and editing scenes, working with actors and threading the narrative along. Time will tell.