Reese Witherspoon has had producer credits on a few of her films, but Penelope is her first total baby. Her Type A film company found the script, the director and put the film into production.
Witherspoon Produces Penelope
"My producing partner Jennifer Simpson brought me the script about four years ago," said Witherspoon. "She had been working with my company, she found the script, and she loved it. It was a script that other people had read, there were a lot of ideas about how to make it. People tossed around making it an animated movie. When she brought it to me I just thought it was great. It was perfect for our company because at the center it was a wonderful, fantastic, cinematic movie. At the center it also had a really great female character who was strong, ambitious, but definitely had a journey to go through to get to the place where she would find herself."
The high powered actress actually did pound the pavement searching for a distributor for Penelope. "We did the film festival in Toronto and sold the film. It’s been an interesting journey of finding the exact and right partner. I feel like we finally found the right situation. We really believe in this movie, we wanted it to come out the right way, and we didn’t want to compromise a lot."
Luckily, the film spoke for itself in large part. "People loved the film at the Toronto Film Festival, so we got a great response, so that helps. Everybody who sees it just loves it and wants to bring their kids to it."
The story about a girl cursed with a pig's nose is really about accepting oneself, flaws and all. Of course, this is embodied in the inevitable magical moment when actress Christina Ricci transforms back into the cutie pie we all know and love. Figuring out how to do that without ruining the positive message was also a producer's dilemma.
"We were very particular with the editing in the script about her not having a miraculous change. Her acceptance comes before her physical change comes, so really she has to accept herself first, because who she is and what is great about herself, before her body physically changes. She looks so darn cute with the nose, for a second we were like ‘Maybe we shouldn’t get rid of the nose. Maybe everybody else should change.’ There was a lot of deliberation about that moment."
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