Anne Hathaway Is Reportedly Producing An Ella Enchanted Series

Between the smash success of The Devil Wears Prada 2 and plans for the much-hoped-for Princess Diaries 3, Anne Hathaway is having a blast revisiting her generation-defining lineup of early-aughts gems.

“I thought that I was in the small, weird indie section of my career. I thought that was where I was going to live,” she recently told The New York Times. “And so I’m actually pretty delighted that somebody’s asked me to come back and basically do the equivalent of a stadium tour.”

Well — to borrow from Taylor Swift — she’s adding one more era to the lineup. On May 18, Deadline reported that Hathaway is set to executive produce an Ella Enchanted TV series that’s in development at Disney+.

Ella Enchanted was one of her earliest film roles. Based on Gail Carson Levine’s novel of the same name, the 2004 fairytale adaptation starred Hathaway as the titular Ella of Frell — a girl who’s cursed to be obedient to every command. Naturally, this lends itself to some tense situations, like being ordered to stab her dreamy love interest, Prince Char (Hugh Dancy), while he’s proposing, a scene that practically defined angst for nascent yearners everywhere.

According to Deadline, the Ella Enchanted series would not be a sequel — rather, it’s reportedly a coming-of-age story that follows Ella in boarding school. (While this means Hathaway wouldn’t reprise her role as the teen heroine, there’s no stopping her from appearing in another capacity à la Christina Ricci in Wednesday.) In addition to Hathaway working as an executive producer, Beth Schwartz (Dead Boy Detectives) will serve as showrunner, and Ilana Wolpert (Anyone But You) will pen the series.

In the two decades since Ella Enchanted, Hathaway has nodded to the fairytale several times — often in support of important causes. At a 2018 dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, she shared a message for a 10-year-old transgender girl who named herself Ella after the film. “Ella sweetie, I want to make something absolutely clear to you: It takes zero courage to love you.”

And in 2024, Hathaway performed Queen’s “Somebody to Love” — a rousing number from Ella Enchanted — at a Broadway fundraiser for Kamala Harris.

Speaking generally of her beloved roles, she told The New York Times in April: “I’ve been so lucky I’ve been a part of these films that have offered people comfort for what now feels like it’s going on generations. And I’ve tried to do my best to respect and protect the legacy of that while also developing as an artist, while also just being a person who can walk down the street and be just very, very, very normal, as normal as I can.”