‘Whale Rider’s Niki Caro To Direct Disney’s Live-Action ‘Mulan’
We haven’t heard much of anything about Disney’s Mulan project, until now. I guess Disney wanted to give us a little Valentine’s Day gift.
According to THR, Disney has hired Niki Caro to direct the film. Caro was on the short list to direct Captain Marvel for the studio. However, now that she’s on Mulan, that likely puts her out of the running for Captain Marvel.
Caro will be the second woman at the studio to direct a movie budgeted at over $100 million. (Ava DuVernay is the first, with A Wrinkle in Time.) Disney previously worked with Caro, on the 2015 cross-country drama McFarland, USA, for which she lived in central California for nearly a year to immerse herself in the Mexican-American community there.
Sources say that Disney also considered other women for this project, including Wonder Woman’s Patty Jenkins and Michelle MacLaren (Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones).
Disney and producers Chris Bender, Jason Reed and Jake Weiner are taking pains to assure fans that Mulan will be culturally authentic. The studio had initially sought an Asian director for the project, meeting with Ang Lee (who passed, citing scheduling) and Rogue One star Jiang Wen, a hit director in his native China. Sony, which is developing a rival live-action film about the Chinese legend, also hoped to put an Asian director at the helm, but ultimately hired television veteran Alex Graves.
What do you guys think about this choice? Let us know in the comments!
