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Linda Woolverton

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Screenwriter

The Resume

    (December 19, 1952- )
    Born in Long Beach, California
    Birth name is Linda Cheryl Woolverton
    Author of 'Star Wind' and 'Running Before the Wind'
    Wrote the screenplays for 'Beauty and the Beast,' 'Homeward Bound,' 'The Lion King,' 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'Maleficent,' and 'Alice Through the Looking Glass'
    Penned the script for episodes of 'Star Wars: Ewoks,' 'Dennis the Menace,' 'The Real Ghostbusters,' 'My Little Pony,' and 'Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers'
    Received a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical for the Broadway adaptation of 'Beauty and the Beast'; Also wrote the books for 'Aida' (2000) and 'Lestat' (2003)

Why she might be annoying:

    She wrote a TV Pilot for a Lifetime series based on 'The Clan of the Cave Bear' that was never picked up.
    She was moved off of the pre-production drafting process of 'Frozen,' along with fellow Disney veteran Alan Menken.
    She took a feminist-leaning sledge hammer to the original 'Sleeping Beauty' story for the god-awful 'Maleficent' changing key elements of it beyond recognition (Evil Fairy waking the Princess with a kiss? What the Hell?)
    She repeatedly clashed with male production staffers over how much agency the Belle character would have in the movie.
    She specifically recalled one example in which the staff rewrote a scene which she originally had Belle sticking pins on places of interest in a map, instead putting her in the kitchen making a cake that said 'welcome home Papa.'
    She said: 'The opposite sort of thing would happen as well. Once everybody realized she wasn’t going to be this typical Disney female, they would go to the extreme. When Gaston came, they had her dumping him in a closet. She became bitchy.'

Why she might not be annoying:

    She holds a Master’s Degree in Theater for Children from California State Fullerton.
    After graduating, she started her own children’s theater, for which she performed, wrote and directed traveling productions.
    She left a four year stint as an executive with CBS Television, in 1984, to become a full-time writer.
    She is widely credited with paving the way inside Disney for the creation of strong female protagonists.
    She was the first woman to write the script for a full-length Disney animated feature ('Beauty' was also the first Disney film to have a script pre-written before the storyboard process).
    The box office success of 2010's 'Alice in Wonderland,' made her the first and only female screenwriter with a sole writing credit on a billion-dollar film.
    She received the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Beauty and Beast's staging at the Dominion Theatre (1998).
    She was fortunate enough to have Jeffrey Katzenberg in her corner during the development process for 'Beauty' (he made her the tie breaker for some of the more bizarre story suggestions).
    She later joked 'they had her [Belle] crying too much when she was in the Beast’s castle. She cried all the time. I said, Guys, I don’t think she would cry this much. I mean, I wouldn’t cry this much.'

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 14 Votes: 71.43% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 5 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying