The director of the Joey King-led action-fantasy says the world building was a mix of John Wick and ‘The Duel’
The director of the Joey King-led action-fantasy says the world building was a mix of John Wick and ‘The Duel’
Even though the heroine in Disney’s The Princess is locked in a tower, and there is an evil man, with an even wickeder, witchy sidekick making her life hell, she is a very different kind of Disney princess. “We wanted to play with the trope of a Disney movie with a princess,” says director Le-Van Kiet over a video call from California. “We wanted the audience to feel that this was a satire of a Disney movie.”
The Vietnamese director says the project came to him when he was in the middle of finishing a movie in Southeast Asia. “The studio cold called me and presented me with the script. In late January last year, I started to talk with the studio about how and what this movie could be and eventually we were up and running in four months.”
The Princess tells the story of a king who had two daughters. Since he has no sons, he decides to get his elder daughter married to the bloodthirsty Julius who despises the king’s peaceful ways. The Princess (she is unnamed) is no shrinking violet having been trained in martial arts by Linh. When she leaves Julius at the altar, he is rather annoyed and with Moira, his horrid second-in-command, and an unpleasant band of mercenaries takes over the castle — The Princess is incidentally set in medieval times.
Joey King in The Princess
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
The Kissing Booth star, Joey King, was attached to the project already, says Kiet. “I was happy and excited to be working with her. We built the character of her mentor, Linh, and I want Veronica Ngô for that part as it is the heart of the movie. The princess is essentially doing all this in secret, because she does not want her family to know. It was already built in that she was to have this mentor who would teach her and give her the confidence to be a warrior,” says the director who also worked with Veronica in the 2019 Vietnamese martial arts film, Furie.
Dominic Cooper, who plays the teeth-gnashing Julius, Kiet says is a fantastic actor. “He plays a formidable villain. I loved him in Preacher had a great time with him. Olga (Kurylenko), plays Moira, the archetype of a bad person with some soul. We wanted her to come across as evil in a complex way. You understand where she is coming from.”
Veronica Ngo ( left) and Joey King in a still from the film
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
For the look of the film Kiet says they were looking for less fantasy. “We wanted to make the audience believe that this world could exist in a certain time in history. We did not want to be historical in the sense of being factually accurate. We wanted to play with the genre. We built a world that was a little bit like John Wick, with the grounded-ness of The Duel. So people could appreciate the complications of what the Princess has to do in this castle.”
The Princess is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar
