The Nutcracker is one of those traditional stories that come around every holiday season, which makes now the perfect time to get the first look at Disney's big holiday offering for next year, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. The first trailer shows us how the new Disney version will be similar to the ballet that we're all familiar with, as well as some ways in which it will be quite different. Check out the trailer below.
The trailer opens with elements that will be familiar to anybody who has seen the ballet version of The Nutcracker as we're introduced to McKenzie Foy's Clara and Drosselmeyer, being played by Morgan Freeman. In the ballet, Drosselmeyer is the man who builds the Nutcracker, but here we see him sending Clara to follow a thread which leads her into a snowy alternate world. From there, we see Clara meeting all sorts of interesting and usual characters and visiting many strange locations. These are four realms that the title refers to. According to the plot synopsis, Clara journeys through those four realms in search of a key that she has lost that will open a gift for her left by her late mother. To help her, she'll have a young soldier named Philip, played by Jayden Fowora-Knight.
While there's a lot that looks new and different in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, there's also a significant portion of the trailer which will look familiar to those that have spent a Christmas or two at the ballet. Much of the ballet itself consists of the lead characters sitting and watching a series of dances, and the film does appear to contain those elements. We see Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy sitting down, and we also see a few different dance numbers which appear to be taking place on a stage. Exactly how these more traditional elements of the story will mesh with the new and clearly more fantasy-action aspects of the plot is anybody's guess.
Still, Keira Knightley's Sugar Plum Fairy looks as sugary sweet as we'd expect such a character to be.
It's nearly a year before The Nutcracker and the Four Realms arrives in theaters, as the movie has a release date of November 2018. It certainly looks to have a magical and fantastical quality, so it could be exactly what fans are looking for during next year's holiday season.
