Cinderella: A Twist In Time

This is an idea for a hypothetical rewrite of Cinderella 3: A Twist In Time that could have been a replacement for the critically panned Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True. The movie would simply be titled Cinderella: A Twist In Time, without any mention of it being a sequel. The movie would have the distinction of being one of the few theatrically released sequels and would come out on June 18, 2010 in the UK and June 25, 2010 in the US. The movie would be rated PG by both the MPAA in the US and the BBFC in the UK (for mild threat and mild strong language).

Plot
It has been a year since Cinderella married Prince Kit. Both of them head to the forest to attend their wedding anniversary that the mice and Fairy Godmother have prepared for them. Meanwhile, Anastasia and Drizella, who are currently taking over Cinderella's jobs at the household, are not having a good time. Anastasia manages to follow Cinderella and the prince to where the anniversary is being held. Figuring out that it was magic that gave Cinderella her "happily ever after", she swipes the Fairy Godmother's wand when she drops it. Anastasia returns home quickly and shows it to Lady Tremaine and her sister, both thinking it's just a stick and she has lost her mind.

The Fairy Godmother shows up and attempts to get the wand back from Anastasia, who accidentally turns her into a statue. Impressed, Lady Tremaine takes the wand and reverses time to undo Cinderella's happily ever after by going back to the events at the end of the first movie, in a bid to once again make Cinderella's life a misery. She makes what was originally a tiny shoe fit Anastasia's big foot with Cinderella being locked in her tower, only to be freed to see Anastasia and Drizella leaving. While speaking with Cinderella as she's about to give her the replacement glass slipper she pulls out, Lady Tremaine snatches it with her staff and shatters it. Furious, Lady Tremaine confronts Cinderella and does not allow her to approach the Prince or the palace, but allows her to clean up this mess. When Lady Tremaine leaves, this leads Jaq and Gus to appear and for Cinderella to sing "More Than a Dream". Gus and Jaq try cheering her up, Jaq saying that "Princey knows he danced with Cinderelley last night!" and gives Cinderella the idea to go after kit and convince him that they danced together.

Skipping back to the step family, they've arrived at the castle, where Kit is speaking while sword fighting with his father. They go into discussion about how the king was immediately smitten by his Queen, Kit's mother, who had passed on years before. With Anastasia arriving, Kit is, at first, glad as he thinks it's the girl he danced with (Cinderella), but slightly disappointed when seeing Anastasia. He tells her that she and her family will get an escort home, but Lady Tremaine uses the wand to make him forget who he really danced with and marry Anastasia that night. Kit falls under the spell and, believing he danced with Anastasia, gives her the ring to marry them. Anastasia goes hyper and agrees to the marriage.

Meanwhile, Gus and Jaq had witnessed this event from a lamp high above the scene since they got inside with Cinderella, who was claiming to be the royal mouse catcher to stay inside. Gus and Jaq play along and, when viewing this scene, they rush off to tell Cinderella. Later on, Cinderella is seen confronting Kit and both are confused, the prince thinking he danced with Anastasia yet Cinderella knows the truth. She is cut short from saying what really happened and forced to go find the mice (Jaq and Gus) that have come into the castle. Cinderella is placed in the cellar where Gus and Jaq tell her what Lady Tremaine had done to Kit, Cinderella now set on getting the wand back.

Anastasia and Kit have a moment where they dance and Anastasia is repeatedly stepping on his foot by accident. When the waltz is over, the King summons her into another room, while the Duke takes the Prince out and tells her about his wife. He gave her the Queen's most treasured possession, which is a seashell. Both the King and Queen were walking one day on a beach, unknowing of one another, and reached for said seashell at the same time. Their hands met and they fell in love. He allows Anastasia to keep the shell, who is smitten with it instantly. Kit tells the Duke that he felt nothing when his hand connected with Anastasia's, and is once again confused. He begins to sing the song "How Can This Be", to express his bewilderment. Jaq and Gus get into the room where the step family is staying and Lucifer's tail manages to get caught on fire, prompting the famous line "Someone put out the cat!" coming into play. Anastasia throws a pillow against him and whams him right into the wall, the stepmother demanding that someone would call for the housekeeper. Cinderella comes across Anastasia and promises her that while she won't allow her mother to get away with her nefarious plot, she will find some way to free Anastasia (and by extension, Drizella) from her grip. Anastasia thanks Cinderella for the offer and urges her to keep a low profile. Cinderella takes Anastasia's advice and continues searching for the wand. Cinderella eventually gets into the room in disguise with a castle maid bonnet covering her face and hair.

Lady Tremaine pulls the bonnet off to reveal Cinderella. Jaq and Gus get the wand, and the three make a run for it down the halls while being chased by guards. With Jaq and Gus using the magic from the wand, they transform Lucifer into a jack in the box first, then a mini-sized Lucifer, then back to normal when he's in the mouse hole. Cinderella makes it to a staircase where Kit appears, Cinderella trying to break the spell on him so he would remember who he really danced with. She is narrowly cut off when the guards get to her and Lady Tremaine takes back the wand. Cinderella manages to grace her hand over Kit's, which has him shocked and now baffled. Lady Tremaine orders for Cinderella to be on the next ship on exile from the kingdom. Drizella almost divulges their plan and Tremaine warns her to keep quiet, unless she wishes to join Cinderella.

Late afternoon, Kit is seen talking to his father, but motions into a small fitting room perhaps. He speaks with Jaq and Gus, who perform the song "At the Ball" explaining that he danced with Cinderella and that he was under a spell. This causes him to hurry out the room and to the stairs where he confronts his father, who forbids him from stepping down the stairs. Kit agrees, only to jump out the window and climb down the vines, then gets on his horse and demands one of the guards to tell him where Cinderella is. He rushes off to her rescue so she isn't sent away for good, the King allowing this to happen when he sees it. Kit and his trusty steed race after the boat, where they end up running through a lighthouse and the horse gets scared of heights. Kit is seen flying onto the boat and using a small blade against the sail to soften his fall. He sees Cinderella and places his hand against hers and knows it was her who he danced with.

They return to the castle, and the King orders for Lady Tremaine, Anastasia, and Drizella to be brought into custody. Lady Tremaine's emotional abuse towards Anastasia starts to become much more pronounced at this stage. Upon seeing the Prince returning with Cinderella after rescuing her from exile. Anastasia begins to break down that the Prince doesn't truly love her, but Lady Tremaine tries to pressure Anastasia to marry him. Anastasia at this point is unsure if she truly loves him, which enrages Lady Tremaine. She grabs Anastasia by the shoulders and begins running her mouth off at Anastasia, forcing her to go along with her plot regardless of whether or not she and the Prince love each other for who they truly are, and then physically shakes Anastasia while harshly telling her to stop crying. Lady Tremaine then rubs Anastasia's eyes painfully, which causes her to develop an involuntary eye twitch. She then tells Anastasia to grow up and do exactly as she says, as she teleports away with her two daughters before the guards can arrest them.

Having been informed that Lady Tremaine and her daughters have fled, the King orders the guards to double their search and to have the Tremaines brought into custody as soon as they're found. Cinderella manages to convince the King to spare Anastasia from any severe punishment, as she is aware of Lady Tremaine's abuse of her two biological daughters and hasn't been able to do anything to protect either of them. Lady Tremaine later returns with Anastasia and explains to Cinderella that she plans to have Anastasia married while Cinderella herself is sent to her death. During this confrontation she reveals that she has, indeed, turned back the hands of time. After a heated exchange between Cinderella and Lady Tremaine over the latter trying to force Anastasia into marrying the Prince, Tremaine reveals that she had an inkling the mysterious girl she saw at the ball might have been Cinderella, and that while Cinderella carelessly singing 'So This Is Love' was the confirmation Tremaine needed to lock her in her room, Lady Tremaine would have most likely found out through other means even if Cinderella HAD been more careful. After Cinderella tries to ask Anastasia whether or not she truly loves the Prince, Lady Tremaine accuses Cinderella of trying to brainwash Anastasia and whisks her away into a warped pumpkin carriage, along with her two mouse friends Jaq and Gus. With the help of Jaq and Gus, the three conquer over the pumpkin carriage and Lucifer, and ride back on the horse that was used while singing "Oh, Anastasia", expressing her desperation to repair her relationship with Anastasia and save her from Lady Tremaine's influence.

Cinderella makes it back to the wedding, just in time to witness, to her amazement, Anastasia (still using Cinderella's appearance) looking her dead in the eyes and saying "I...DON'T", and declaring she only wants to be loved for herself, having realized she does not truly love Kit. Infuriated by both Cinderella's interference and Anastasia's newfound conscience, Lady Tremaine steps out from her hiding place and decides to seize the Kingdom by force. And this is where her absolute worst wrath is unleashed. She creates a whirling vortex of evil magic and begins transforming the guards into farm animals before turning on Anastasia. Infuriated by her stepmother's ruthlessness, Cinderella steps in to defend Anastasia. However, instead of striking them down at once, Lady Tremaine chooses instead to strategically wait for the Prince to step in, along with the King and the Grand Duke. Despite Cinderella urging the King to keep out of her stepmother's way for his own safety, they stand in front of Lady Tremaine's captives regardless. Lady Tremaine then flies into an uncontrollable fury, taking her lust and hatred out on Cinderella and Anastasia, and revealing that she's been pulling all the strings to get them to this stage by murdering Anastasia's father and both of Cinderella's parents. Cinderella also notices that Anastasia has developed an eye twitch, whereupon Lady Tremaine reveals that she had harshly told Anastasia to stop crying over the fact that the Prince didn't love her, and then rubbed the tears off her eyes too hard when she wouldn't stop crying. She goes onto reveal that her parents had brought her up to adopt her current mindset of cruelty, affluence and vanity. Having now decided she doesn't need ANYONE to help her, Lady Tremaine turns Drizella into a toad, and Cinderella and Anastasia can only watch in horror.

Anastasia confesses that she had only taken the wand in the first timeline out of desperation for love. Lady Tremaine then reveals that she had always suspected magic had helped Cinderella break free of her in the first timeline, and that even if Anastasia HADN'T wandered off, Lady Tremaine would have eventually caught on in her own time. Cinderella and Anastasia then realize that had Lady Tremaine found Fairy Godmother's wand even earlier, she wouldn't have needed to go through the stream of marriages, murders and births she's orchestrated, and nor she wouldn't have even needed to turn back the hands of time. Lady Tremaine now declares she doesn't need anyone to help her anymore, and that there was nothing anyone could have done to stop her in her tracks. Cinderella, having finally understood what a genuinely evil and psychopathic person Lady Tremaine is, and has been from the very beginning, resolves to defend her stepsister, her true love and the Kingdom's leadership. She bravely takes Kit's sword and dares Lady Tremaine to strike them down. Lady Tremaine, her skin glowing white, her hair and lips glowing red, and her eyes glowing orange with decades worth of hatred and lust fires a bolt of magic at them, finally realising her wrath on the entire Kingdom. Cinderella manages to deflect the bolt of magic as Lady Tremaine and Drizella are sucked away. The vortex of evil magic begins to whirl around much more violently with a few mighty claps of thunder and blinding flashes of light; an amalgamation of Lady Tremaine's devilish traits, before it finally fades away. Tremaine's captives then breathe a massive sigh of relief before Cinderella turns round to check on the others, but Anastasia begins to descend into an emotional breakdown.

Anastasia reunites Cinderella with the Prince and then sadly walks away. She's about to use the wand to turn back to her true self, but not before asking for Cinderella's permission. Cinderella happily agrees to let Anastasia use the wand and she uses to transform back to her true appearance. Instead of letting Cinderella thank Anastasia for allowing her to regain her happy ending, Anastasia throws the wand over to her and walks over to the King to give the seashell back to him. However, instead of happily taking it back when the King asserts that everyone deserves a chance at love, Anastasia instead puts her foot down and forces him to take it back as she truly believes she should force herself to pay the price for everything she's done to Cinderella. Anastasia then prepares to leave the Kingdom for good. Cinderella tries to talk her out of doing so by telling Anastasia that she forgives her, but Anastasia remains convinced she doesn't deserve it. After a tearful apology to Cinderella, Anastasia's flies into an intense emotional breakdown as her eye twitch wears off and, in a horrific retelling of the dress ripping scene from the first movie, she begins angrily ripping up her own clothing to an even worse extent than she had done to Cinderella, while putting herself down for her mistreatment, and asserting truly believes she deserves to be punished. Anastasia not only rips up her own dress, but also breaks off the heels of her shoes and even goes as far as yanking the golden clip out of her hair and turning it into a disorganized mess, as she gives Cinderella her explicit blessing to banish her from the Kingdom. Cinderella, wanting Anastasia to be happy, tries one last time to reason with her, but to no avail.

Anastasia then races outside and mounts Cinderella's horse before riding off into the night with angry determination to break off all ties with Cinderella and the Royal Family. Cinderella, reeling in horror from Anastasia's outburst, begins to break down as the bluebirds arrive on the scene with Jaq and Gus. She laments how much Anastasia has suffered under Lady Tremaine, and her desperation to patch things up with her, and in a rare moment of raw anger, admits that there was virtually no way that she or either of her stepsisters could've stood up for each other, due to the leash Lady Tremaine had on all of them, and admits that her stepmother would've been able to work around any rebellion easily, as seizing the Kingdom was her sole intention from the very outset. Cinderella then breaks down in tears as Kit and her mouse friends help her regain her confidence to go after Anastasia and repair their relationship. Having regained her confidence, Cinderella and Kit restore Fairy Godmother from the stone state Anastasia accidentally turned her into before Lady Tremaine turned back time, and she restores Cinderella's dress. Cinderella and the Prince then fill her in on the situation. During this exchange, Fairy Godmother admits she was indeed aware of Lady Tremaine having killed not only Cinderella's parents, but also Anastasia and Drizella's father, but admits that there was virtually no way she could have stopped her. and Cinderella forgives her out of understanding, as she believes Lady Tremaine, being such a ruthless opportunist, would simply take any opportunity she could to set her plot back into motion. Fairy Godmother offers to restore the original timeline, but Cinderella declines the offer, as she and Kit believe they will have a better life ahead in this new timeline. Cinderella then ties the knot with the Prince, and becomes Princess.

Afterwards, Cinderella, the Prince, the King and the Grand duke get into a private carriage to track down Anastasia. Anastasia, having arrived at the harbour, sits down on the edge of the pontoon and begins having flashbacks to her prior actions; particularly her ripping up her own wedding dress while claiming she is unworthy of Cinderella's forgiveness, and later forcing the King, against his will, to take his seashell back. She eventually reaches the conclusion that she should try to forgive herself and patch everything up with Cinderella, just as Cinderella and the other royals arrive at the harbour. Anastasia breaks down in tears, feeling remorse for trying to ditch Cinderella earlier. A visibly concerned Cinderella runs over to hug Anastasia and consoles her. She then gently wipes Anastasia's tears away with a handkerchief. Cinderella and Anastasia then begin to talk everything over. Anastasia apologises for trying to flee the Kingdom and admits she only went along with Lady Tremaine's plan because she felt she had no other choice. Cinderella reassures Anastasia that she understands completely, and take the opportunity to thank her for refusing to go through with the wedding, as she believe it's *never* too late to make amends. Cinderella also admits that she was devestated by Anastasia tearing up her own dress and trying to flee the Kingdom, as she and Kit didn't want to lose her. Anastasia also readily admits that her outburst was not because she really believed it would make Cinderella happy to see her suffer as a punishment for her abuse, but because she was just scared, and that she was expressing her remorse badly.

Cinderella then confesses to Anastasia that while her decision to take the wand wasn't such a good idea, Lady Tremaine would have eventually caught on in her own time had Anastasia not fled the château, and that she believes Anastasia taking the wand was therefore something of a blessing in disguise. Cinderella also expresses her relief that Anastasia ultimately changed her mind about leaving the Kingdom, and that Anastasia now knows she *does* deserve her forgiveness. She even offers to let Anastasia move into the castle and appoint her as one of her Ladies-In-Waiting, which Anastasia happily accepts. Anastasia thanks Cinderella profusely and the two embrace, having finally accepted themselves as True Sisters.

Cinderella then takes the seashell from the King and gently gives it back to Anastasia on his behalf, as she too believes that everyone deserves true love. Anastasia, this time, happily accepts the gift and joins Cinderella and Kit in a group hug, now acknowledging themselves as a family. They then head back to the wedding, but not before Fairy Godmother reappears to let them know that she's restored Lady Tremaine and Drizella to to their human forms. Cinderella and the King decide that while Lady Tremaine should be made into a slave as punishment for her cruelty towards her three daughters, and her attempt to seize the Kingdom by force. When they arrive back at the wedding, Kit introduces Anastasia to the baker from Cinderella II (now name David), and they fall in love with each other. The wedding cake is then presented, Cinderella cuts the first four slices for her, Kit, Anastasia and David. The four then share the first dance, as Cinderella and Anastasia begin their new life in the castle.

After Cinderella and Kit's wedding, Lady Tremaine, having been made into a servant, becomes increasingly aggressive towards everyone, even Drizella, as she refuses to accept defeat. After several weeks of relentless verbal abuse and insubordination, Cinderella and the King decide she should be exiled from the Kingdom to protect Anastasia and Drizella. Lady Tremaine leaves the Kingdom in disgrace to await further punishment. Drizella, however, is set free and left to pursue her own destiny. Anastasia and David start dating seriously, and their romance blossoms even after Cinderella and the Prince return from their honeymoon. She then helps Cinderella adapt to her position as a Princess by abolishing some of the old traditions such as keeping commoners out of the Palace and keeping the curtains closed during the day. The King, while initially sceptical, eventually approves of these changes. David is later offered a position in the Palace kitchen which he gladly accepts, and she eventually proposes to Anastasia. Finally, around a year after Lady Tremaine's change of events, Anastasia and David finally become married, and it just so happens to coincide with Cinderella and Kit's first wedding anniversary. And from that moment onwards, they all live happily ever after.

Voice Cast

 * Jennifer Hale as Cinderella
 * Chris Daniel Barnes as Prince Kit
 * Susanne Blakeslee as Lady Tremaine
 * Tress MacNeille as Anastasia Tremaine
 * Russi Taylor as Drizella Tremaine and Fairy Godmother
 * Daniel Radcliffe as David
 * Michael Gambon as The King
 * Holland Taylor as Prudence
 * Rob Paulsen as Jaq, Grand Duke and Bishop
 * Corey Burton as Gus
 * Frank Welker as Lucifer

Jennifer Hale also provides Cinderella's singing voice.

Home media
The movie would be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on November 19, 2010 in the UK and November 20, 2010 in the US.

Production
Production on Cinderella: A Twist In Time began in mid 2006 and ended in early 2010.

Soundtrack
The movie's soundtrack is composed by long-time Disney collaborator Alan Menken, The original songs contained in the body of the film, including "Perfectly Perfect," "More Than a Dream", "How Can This Be? "At the Ball",  "Oh, Anastasia..." and "True Love At Last" are written by frequent Disney lyricists Phil Collins and Glenn Slater. Instead of using a pop song, the credits would continue to use Menken's soundtrack.