Disney, If You’re Listening, Michael Moscovitz Would Return for a ‘Princess Diaries’ Reboot

Manori Ravindran
·3 min read
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Who didn’t have a crush on Michael Moscovitz in 2001’s “The Princess Diaries”?

Mia Thermopolis’s sweet, slightly awkward love interest — played by Robert Schwartzman — liked her well before she was ever Genovian royalty, had a cool band (Schwartzman’s actual band, Rooney), and even knew how to fix cars.

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Fans will recall the devastation of the movie’s sequel, “The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement” (2004), in which Anne Hathaway’s Mia shrugs that her and Michael are now “just friends” because he was busy touring the country with his band. She then gets together with Chris Pine, in his breakout role as Nicholas Deveraux.

Schwartzman, the frontman of Rooney as well as the co-founder of U.S. distributor Utopia, tells Variety that, in fact, he was touring with the band when he got the call informing him that he wouldn’t be in the sequel.

“I was literally on a tour bus when they made that decision,” he says.

Rumors of a third instalment have been circulating for some time, with Hathaway revealing in 2019 that there was a script. Many of the cast members, including Julie Andrews and Mandy Moore, appear to be keen to return for another movie. Although Schwartzman’s Michael would need to be skilfully reintroduced given the second movie ends with Mia and Nicholas getting their happily ever after, he says he’d be game.

“People have asked me, like, ‘Would you do another one, if they brought it back? Or they brought that story back?’ Of course, if the producers and the studio felt that that story is going to live on with the same actors,” says Schwartzman.

“How cool is it to just be able to have been a part of a movie that really had an impact and still is out in the world?”

Schwartzman noted, however, that the experience would be vastly different without original director Garry Marshall, who died in 2016. For Schwartzman, who has directed three feature films of his own, Marshall was a role model on set.

“[For me], as a filmmaker, as a creative person, it was just really cool to even watch Garry Marshall work as a comedic director, writer and person within the studio system, because he was making a studio film but he was Garry Marshall. So he was able to keep his brand intact within the studio system.”

So, Schwartzman’s definitely in for the reboot, then?

“If your question is, ‘Would you do it if they brought back ‘The Princess Diaries’ and its original cast and continued telling that story? Would I be a part of that journey?’ Yes. I mean, I’m on the journey any way I slice it. I was in the first film, and that character and that love interest and relationship had an impact on audiences. And I think that’s awesome. So Disney, if you’re listening, greenlight the next ‘Princess Diaries.'”

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