Magic Kingdom's Cinderella Castle Appeared in Concept Art for 'Maleficent' Movie

Concept artist Dylan Cole shared a never-before-seen piece of concept art that heavily features a familiar Disney World icon.

In a post shared to his Instagram, Dylan Cole, a concept artist who worked on the Maleficent films, shared a never-before-seen look at some of his early pitch art for the film depicting a knight on horseback approaching a large castle.

Upon closer inspection, however, the castle depicted does not resemble Sleeping Beauty Castle as seen in her eponymous film or at Disneyland Park. Instead, the towering castle distinctly resembles Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World.

And, as Dylan Cole described in his post, this was an intentional design. He notes that while he and the film’s director took inspiration from Eyvind Earle, famed background artist for Sleeping Beauty, stylistically, they looked to Cinderella and Magic Kingdom for the castle design (though he erroneously refers to it as Sleeping Beauty castle in the original post below):

Maleficent- Early pitch art. This was done when I was working with director Robert Stromberg on his early pitch to the studio. At the time we were leaning heavily into Eyvind Earle. You can see the influences here and I also shamelessly used the Sleeping Beauty castle from Disneyworld, leaning into the Disney history.

Funny thing about this painting is I had COMPLETELY forgotten I had done it until I was pulling images for my art book, Creating Worlds: The Cinematic Art of Dylan Cole (link in bio). Most paintings I forget with good reason, but this was a welcome surprise as it was one of my favorite early paintings I did on the project.