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The Princess, a fantasy action movie, is now back on digital release after being removed from Hulu and Disney+ earlier this year. Co-writers Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton celebrated the movie's return and encouraged viewers to check it out on major streaming platforms. With its availability on streaming, The Princess has another chance to find success and captivate viewers with its fantasy storyline and action-packed scenes.

Directed by Le-Van Kiet and starring Joey King and Olga Kurylenko, the fantasy action movie The Princess returns to streaming after being removed from Hulu earlier this year. The story focuses on an unnamed Princess who, after refusing to wed a malicious sociopath, is kidnapped and locked away in a secret tower of her father’s castle. The princess then must attempt to save her kingdom as her would-be suitor threatens her father’s throne. The original Hulu movie was removed from their platform and Disney+ on May 23, 2023.

Now,...

In what has become a grim reality of the next phase of the streaming era, 60 movies and television shows have left Disney+ and Hulu. That includes Sundance crowdpleasers like “Timmy Failure,” initially-intended for theatrical releases like “Artemis Fowl” and “The Once and Future Ivan,” big-budget IP adaptations like “Willow” and “Y: The Last Man,” and high-concept YA dramedies like “Stargirl” and “Rosaline.” Once such casualty is “The Princess.”

Released in August of 2022, the original high-concept hybrid of “Die Hard” and “The Raid” features Joey King (star of “The Kissing Booth” trilogy) as a princess trapped in a tower having to fight and kill her way floor-by-floor to save herself and her family from a violent coup attempt. It’s the kind of clever genre exercise that might have been a theatrical release a generation ago. Had it been given a theatrical release, however token, it would also have been available on DVD,...

Stars: Joey King, Ed Stoppard, Alex Reid, Dominic Cooper, Veronica Ngo, Olga Kurylenko, Kristofer Kamiyasu, Fergus O’Donnell, Antoni Davidov | Written by Ben Lustig, Jake Thornton | Directed by Le-Van Kiet

The Princess opens with the title character waking up groggy to find herself locked in a tower with only vague memories of how she got there. Within minutes she has to deal with a pair of soldiers with ill intent, both of whom she quite violently dispatches with moves that include a lethal kick and a hairpin through the eye.

As that probably told you, The Princess tosses all notions of historical accuracy, or any kind of accuracy really right out the window. Director Le-Van Kiet takes Ben Lustig (The Thirst) and Jake Thornton’s script and runs with it. After his last two films, he knew he needed to repeat the success of his last hit, the female-fronted action film Furie.

In most stories, a princess trapped in tower will need a man to save her. Joey King’s unnamed Princess isn’t like that. Furie director Le-Van Kiet’s actioner attempts to take a female lead and invert The Raid, with her facing off against a seemingly unending phalanx of enemies as she descends the tower where she’s being held captive, prior to her wedding to the evil and ambitious Julius (Dominic Cooper).

Initially, the presence of Joey King and the fact that this film (in the UK) would be launching on Disney+ made me think it would essentially be Enchanted with swords; a stereotypical Disney princess finally fighting back violently. Kiet and writers Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton lean into this a little in the film’s opening, which springs The Princess’ fighting skills on us when guards come to her room. Even here though, there’s an immediate retreat from anything cartoony,...

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In a recent interview about The Princess, Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton, the film’s screenwriters, explain how they came up with the idea for their project. The duo wanted to turn convention on its head, to dream up a story in which a princess defies society’s expectations of her. Lustig, a father, comes off especially keen to insist on this film’s novelty in the brief conversation: “I was like, ‘Okay, here’s all these princess movies. But what if one was a badass?’”

It seems Mulan, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Tiana and most recently Merida don’t count. Maybe they’re not tough and outspoken enough. Maybe their adventures don’t have enough action sequences. Perhaps these young women needed to be more uncompromising, intimidating. Or maybe the lessons their stories teach needed to be more obvious, repeatedly telegraphed and so blunt...

There’s something kind of remarkable about watching a 90-minute film that only has a single idea spread across its entire running time — “what if ‘The Raid,’ but about a fairy tale princess trying to fight her way down from the castle tower where she’s been imprisoned by an evil suitor?” — but my awe at what passes for a movie these days was no match for my disappointment in this one. so undercooked that it feels like an AMC psy-op designed to make you run to the nearest multiplex and beg for a ticket to whatever’s showing next. Even Gru feels good in a place like this.

While survivors of Netflix’s “The Kissing Booth” trilogy may be conditioned to expect as much from the latest Joey King vehicle (though she hardly feels responsible for this mess), anyone familiar with Le-Van Kiet’s bone-crunching “Furie” is liable to...

Practically everybody in “The Princess” has a name, except the princess. Played by “The Kissing Booth” cutie Joey King as an anything-but-passive heroine, the movie’s anonymous eponymous protagonist isn’t a proper character so much as a one-dimensional empowerment symbol: “The Princess” represents the antithesis of every fairy-tale damsel who sat around waiting to be whisked away or married off. She begins the movie locked in the top floor of the castle, wearing a wedding dress and iron shackles, and ends it drenched in more blood than Stephen King’s Carrie, some of it hers, but most belonging to all the men who’ve underestimated her.

Over the course of the next hour and a half, “The Princess” hardly stops to catch its breath. Whatever Disney movies may have led you to believe about royals named Ariel (she sings!) and Belle (she reads!), this one learned Krav Maga behind her father’s back,...

“The Princess” opens on a muddle of well-known fairy tales. The titular royal lies unconscious in an ornate dress, her wavy locks strewn across the pillow. Flowers surround her bed. But unlike Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, she awakens on her own and proceeds to beat the ever-loving hell out of two brutish guards. Though that opening promises some kind of meaningful subversion, this film has just one brave question to ask: “What if a princess could also kick your ass?”

The shrug-worthy answer – “Then she would probably kick some ass, I guess” – makes for the bulk of this facile, plotless movie.

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Joey King Bests All Her Opponents in ‘The Princess’ Trailer (Video)

The sparse narrative, from first-time screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton, goes like this: The princess wakes up in a tower. The princess has been kidnapped by the evil nobleman Julius. The princess must...

The Princess Trailer — Le-Van Kiet‘s The Princess (2022) movie trailer has been released by Hulu. The Princess trailer stars Joey King, Dominic Cooper, Olga Kurylenko, and Veronica Ngo. Crew Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton wrote the screenplay for The Princess. Jack Halama created the music for the film. Lorenzo Senatore crafted the cinematography for [...]

Continue reading: The Princess (2022) Movie Trailer: Princess Joey King Refuses to Marry a Sociopath and is Locked in a Tower...

Joey King isn’t messing around in the first trailer for the new 20th Century Studios film “The Princess.”

In the trailer, which you can watch above, King plays a strong-willed princess whose father tries to force her to marry a cruel sociopath. When she refuses, she’s kidnapped and locked in a remote tower of her father’s castle.

That doesn’t stop her for long though, as she fights her way out of the tower, taking down every knight in her path. Set to the tune of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” King begins her takedown.

“I’m not a piece of property to be traded,” she says in the clip, adding: “But these guys f—ed with the wrong princess.”

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And, with her scorned, vindictive suitor intent on taking her father’s throne, the princess must...

Joey King’s upcoming film “The Princess” has a premiere date on Hulu.

The 20th Century Studios film will drop July 1.

No ordinary story about a princess, King’s film is described as an “action-packed fight to the death set in a fairy tale world.”

Here’s the official logline: When a beautiful, strong-willed princess refuses to wed the cruel sociopath to whom she is betrothed, she is kidnapped and locked in a remote tower of her father’s castle. With her scorned, vindictive suitor intent on taking her father’s throne, the princess must protect her family and save the kingdom.

Le-Van Kiet directs from a screenplay by Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton. King and Guy Riedel are executive producers. Neal H. Moritz (the “Fast and Furious” franchise), Toby Jaffe (“Total Recall”) and Derek Kolstad (“John Wick”) produced the film.

In addition to King, the film also stars Dominic Cooper...

Exclusive: Circle Of Confusion is almost doubling its number of partners with the promotion of Josh Adler, Charles Mastropietro and Susan Solomon-Shapiro. This is the first time in more than five years that the management/production company is expanding its partner ranks following the elevation of Brad Mendelsohn in 2015.

Adler, Mastropietro and Solomon-Shapiro’s client list span both the lit and talent side of the business. It includes such actors, writers/showrunners and filmmakers as Natalie Chaidez (Queen Of The South), Emma Corrin (The Crown), Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse), Neil Goldman, Derek Kolstad (Creator of the John Wick franchise), Ben Lustig & Jake Thornton, Mike Makowsky (Bad Education), Ashley Miller, Rachel Morrison, Richard Naing, Molly Parker (Lost in Space), Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek), David Schwimmer (Friends), Kit Steinkellner (Sorry for Your Loss...

Exclusive: 20th Century Studios has acquired The Princess, a spec script By Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton that has The Kissing Booth‘s Joey King attached to star. They’ll make it for Hulu and while the logline is being kept under wraps, spec is described as Rapunzel meets The Raid.

Pic will be Produced by Original Film’s Neal H. Moritz and Toby Jaffe and Derek Kolstad (John Wick). King will be exec producer with Lustig and Thornton co-producing.

If the allusion to The Raid throws you, consider that King is moving from star/exec producer of the Netflix phenomenon The Kissing Booth to being cast opposite Brad Pitt in the action-thriller Bullet Train for Sony Pictures. She was Emmy-nominated for playing Gypsy Rose Blanchard in Hulu limited series The Act, and recently became the youngest person to make a first look deal to produce series for the streaming service.

The blockbuster Final Fantasy video game series is heading to television. Sony Pictures TV and Hivemind, the production company behind Amazon’s The Expanse and Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of The Witcher, have teamed with global video game powerhouse Square Enix to develop a first-of-its-kind, live-action TV adaptation of a beloved chapter from the blockbuster Final Fantasy video game series.

Written by Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton, the TV adaptation will tell an original story set in the fantastic world of Eorzea, based on Final Fantasy Xiv, the franchise’s blockbuster online role-playing game. Since it first debuted in 2013, the online title has continued to amass millions of players around the world, cementing its legacy as one of the most storied and influential franchises in gaming history.

Inspired directly by the world and characters of the title’s fourteenth installment, the project will explore...

The Final Fantasy video game franchise has been around for 30 years and after all that time it’s finally getting a live-action adaptation! There have been several cool animated movies made, but this will be the first time we see this world brought to life in live-action form. That’s something that has got to excite the fans!

Sony Pictures Television is developing a TV series with Hivemind (The Witcher) and Square Enix, the Japanese developer behind the games, also involved. It’s comforting to know that the developer behind the games is involved with the creation of this series.

There aren’t any story details to talk about yet, but we do know that it will tell “an original story set in the fantastic world of Eorzea, a continuously growing world first introduced in Final Fantasy Xiv, which incorporates characters from across the franchise’s long history.” So, even...

Sony Pictures TV has put a live-action adaptation of the popular video game franchise “Final Fantasy” in development.

The series is based on “Final Fantasy Xiv,” the series’ debut online role-playing game that was released in 2013, telling an original story set in Eorzea.

Inspired directly by the world and characters of the title’s fourteenth installment, the project will embrace the bold and genre-bending sensibilities of the revered and long-running “Final Fantasy” series as it explores the struggle between magic and technology in a quest to bring peace to a land in conflict. Filled with iconic hallmarks of the title’s revered mythology – magitek and beastmen, airships and chocobos – the forthcoming series will feature a mixture of new and familiar faces. Those will, notably, include the live-action debut of Cid – one of the games’ central and most beloved characters who has appeared in almost every installment of the franchise to date.

The 30-year-old “Final Fantasy” saga is the latest iconic video game brand to be getting the live-action treatment.

Sony Pictures Television is working on a first ever live-action adaptation of the series, with Hivemind and Square Enix, the Japanese developer behind the games, also involved.

Exact plot details on the prospective series, beyond the source material, are being kept under wraps, however, word is it will tell “an original story set in the fantastic world of Eorzea,” a continuously growing world first introduced in “Final Fantasy Xiv,” which incorporates characters from across the franchise’s long history.

The series will “explore the struggle between magic and technology in a quest to bring peace to a land in conflict,” and feature a blend of new and familiar faces like fan-favorite anti-hero Cid. Features and creatures from the game series, such as magitek, beastmen, airships and chocobos, will all also play a part in the TV adaptation.

Calm your Chocobos!

The iconic long-running, role-playing video game franchise Final Fantasy is coming to television. Sony Pictures Television, Square Enix and production company Hivemind (which produces The Expanse for Amazon and is currently working on Netflix's upcoming The Witcher series) will produce the live-action TV series, which will center on an original story set in the world of Eorzea, first introduced in the online game Final Fantasy Xiv.

Jason F. Brown (The Expanse), Sean Daniel (The Mummy franchise) and Dinesh Shamdasani (Sony Pictures upcoming Bloodshot) will produce for Hivemind. Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton will write for the series and also serve as ...

Exclusive: Sony has acquired the Gideon Sterer children’s book The Night Knights, with Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton writing the script. The scribes pitched the project, and Sony won it in a competitive situation. Ian Bryce is producing through his Ian Bryce Productions banner alongside Escape Artists partners Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal and Steve Tisch.

Illustrated by Cory Godbey, The Night Knights was published this week by Abrams Books for Young Readers. The logline: Nighttime can be scary. Every bump, thump or scratch could be a monster lurking under the bed or in a closet. But if that’s the case, then why haven’t we ever seen a monster? You might think that’s because monsters don’t exist. But maybe monsters do exist . . . but so do something else: The Night Knights. And when night falls, they take their place, protecting us all from the terrors lurking in the dark.