A whisper that Mean Girls actress Avantika Vandanapu would star in a Disney live-action remake of the movie Tangled has sent the rumor mill into overdrive.
Vandanapu became the target of racist trolls who flooded her social media with negative comments on the unconfirmed gossip.
The original Tangled animated feature movie premiered in 2010 and reimagined the 1812 Brothers Grimm fairy tale of Rapunzel, a princess with long, blonde hair trapped in a tower hoping to be rescued by her true love.
Disney has not announced plans to remake the popular film, but a live-action version would follow in the Mouse House's recent tradition of bringing animated features to life. Other titles to undergo the conversion have included The Lion King, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. Similar remakes of Snow White and Bambi are expected to be released in the next couple of years.
Newsweek contacted Disney by email for comment.
While the movie studio has not announced specific plans to remake Tangled, it does have a number of unnamed projects on its release schedule for 2025 and 2026.
There are at least 16 "untitled Disney films" planned for release over the next two years, according to movie website Rotten Tomatoes.
Regardless of whether the rumor was true, many rushed to slam the hypothetical casting of Indian-American actress Vandanapu, based on unverified social media accounts saying she'd nabbed the top role.
"You're beautiful and I'm sure you are an amazing actor but the last thing you deserve is a role meant to be played by a white person with BLOND hair," a person wrote on one of Vandanapu's Instagram posts, which was unrelated to the unconfirmed Tangled remake.
While others rushed to her defence: "It genuinely hurts to see how easily people are willing to spit nasty words at her. If she's cast as Rapunzel, she's my Rapunzel🤷♀️🤷♀️ its not the end of the world, it's a movie. An iconic movie, yes, but still a movie. From Disney. For children."
Newsweek contacted Vandanapu's representatives by email for comment.
The backlash to Vandanapu's potential casting as Rapunzel follows similar reactions to Black singer Halle Bailey being cast as Ariel in the remake of The Little Mermaid, with some accusing the Mouse House of going "woke."
It also mirrors the reactions to the casting of Rachel Zegler, an American actress of Colombian-Polish descent, as Snow White in the remake which is due out in 2025.
Zegler remarked on what a landmark moment it was for both actresses to be cast in those roles.
"Obviously for my community, it's a huge moment. And I hope that it's not one of those moments that we hear about in the news where it's like, 'Oh, the first in X amount of years.' I don't want it to be one of those, where 25 years later it's the next Latina playing a Disney princess," she said in conversation with Bailey in a December edition of Variety's Actors on Actors YouTube series.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more
