Summary:
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Disney+ is developing a TV series adaptation of “Ella Enchanted” with Anne Hathaway as executive producer.
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The show will follow 16-year-old Ella of Frell as she uncovers the truth about her curse and develops relationships.
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The new adaptation will lean into a coming-of-age framework and is highly anticipated by fans of the original film.
Disney+ is developing a television series adaptation of “Ella Enchanted,” the 2004 cult classic that starred Anne Hathaway, with Hathaway attached as an executive producer.
The project is in early development at the streamer and will be co-produced by Miramax Television and Paramount Television Studios. Ilana Wolpert, known for the romantic comedy “Anyone But You,” is writing the series. Beth Schwartz, who served as co-showrunner on Netflix’s “Dead Boy Detectives” and “Sweet Tooth,” is on board as showrunner.
Both will also executive produce alongside Hathaway, Johnathan Rice and Hathaway’s husband Adam Shulman through their company Somewhere Pictures. iGen Studios, the company behind Netflix’s “My Life with the Walter Boys,” is also involved.
According to the official logline, the series will follow 16-year-old Ella of Frell, who is cursed at birth to obey every command. After her mother’s untimely death, she is sent to a boarding school where she begins to uncover the truth about her curse, builds a found family and develops a complicated crush on the prince of her kingdom.
The boarding school setting is a notable shift from the 2004 film. It pulls directly from Gail Carson Levine’s 1997 Newbery Honor-winning novel, which dedicated four chapters to Ella’s time at a finishing school for girls. The new adaptation leans into a coming-of-age framework that some outlets have already compared to Netflix’s “Wednesday.”
For Hathaway, the project marks another chapter in what she has jokingly called her own “Eras Tour.” The actress is currently reprising her role as Andy Sachs in “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” which has grossed more than $545 million globally, and will return as Mia Thermopolis in the long-anticipated “Princess Diaries 3” directed by Adele Lim. She also stars in “Mother Mary,” with “The Odyssey,” “Verity” and “The End of Oak Street” rounding out her 2026 slate.
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“Ella Enchanted” was not a box office hit on release, but a steady afterlife on DVD and streaming turned it into a beloved cult classic for an entire generation of millennials and Gen Z viewers. Novelist Gail Carson Levine, while distinguishing the book from the film, has previously called Hathaway “the perfect Ella.”
A release date and casting details have not yet been announced.
