Emily Blunt & Steven Sondheim call Into the Woods a faithful adaptation

Sunday. Time for my Sunday Slacker post. I'm really taking the easy way out this weekend with this short snippet from Emily Blunt talking about making Into the Woods. She plays the baker's wife and if you recall your Sondheim that means she and the prince have ..., let's call it a moment.

While Steven Sondheim initially told a group of high school musical teachers that Disney had made some changes to the very grown-up plot of Into the Woods —while it's based on the children's fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, the musical is no Cinderella! — as well as the removal of the song Any Moment, the musical maestro later set things straight at, er, Disney's urging (through his lawyer, yikes!) making it clear that he'd been misunderstood. Or perhaps, he'd misunderstood. Anyway, according to Sondheim 2.0, Disney has been very loyal to the material; the song Any Moment is in the movie and yes, the prince and the baker's wife still do have their moment. Sondheim, in his own words:

"When the conversation with the teachers occurred, I had not yet seen a full rough cut of the movie. Coincidentally, I saw it immediately after leaving the meeting and, having now seen it a couple of times, I can happily report that it is not only a faithful adaptation of the show, it is a first-rate movie.

And for those who care, as the teachers did, the Prince's dalliance is still in the movie, and so is "Any Moment."

Knowing Chris Pine is the prince to Blunt's 'baker's wife', that news makes me live happily forever after, indeed.

Blunt in the brief clip, below, concurs. FYI, Into the Woods also features a new song "Rainbows" plus another new song written for the character of The Witch, played by Meryl Streep.

And since the articles - read 'em in full below — go to great lengths vis a vis the casts' credits, I'll copy and past them for you here. Although I must say, if you're going to talk about Emily Blunt, you have to include The Edge of Tomorrow, her BRILLIANT kick-ass female warrior role costarring opposite Tom Cruise. Still one of my favorite, fun films of the year, as I told you in my take on the movie last June.


Rob Marshall ("Chicago," Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides") directs the film, based on the Tony-winning original musical by Lapine, who also penned the screenplay, and Sondheim, who provides music and lyrics.

The cast includes Emily Blunt ("Looper," "The Young Victoria," "The Devil Wears Prada") as the Baker's Wife, James Corden (One Man, Two Guvnors) as the Baker, Anna Kendrick ("Pitch Perfect," "Up in the Air") as Cinderella, Chris Pine ("Star Trek Into Darkness," "Jack Ryan") as Cinderella's Prince, Johnny Depp ("Pirates of the Caribbean," "The Lone Ranger," "Sweeney Todd") as the Wolf, Daniel Huttlestone ("Les Misérables") as Jack, Lilla Crawford (Annie) as Little Red, Tracey Ullman as Jack’s Mother, Christine Baranski ("Mamma Mia!," "The Good Wife") as the Stepmother, MacKenzie Mauzy (Next to Normal) as Rapunzel and Billy Magnussen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) as Rapunzel's Prince.

Check out Sondheim's initial revelations about plot changes via Playbill here, and his response after the big D. got wind of what he'd said.

Into the Woods Trailer #2