Dream Team: Melanie Dickerson and Hettie MacDonald

The Dream Team is series where our writers tell us about their dream collaboration, and why it would be a game-changer.

Author Melanie Dickerson and director Hettie MacDonald would be a great team to create a medieval romance series! 

Melanie Dickerson’s Fairy Tale Romance/Hagenheim book series tells a Christian version of fairytales adapted to create a more realistic version of what the stories would have been during the Middle Ages. Her medieval romance tales are enchanting, pure, and mesmerizing. Although the romance tales are a Christian version of fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Snow White, and Rapunzel, they depict forms of Christianity that were popular in the medieval period, making it a bit of a historical learning experience too.

The books are mesmerizing because of the characters’ language, personality, and intentions. For example, The Fairest Beauty tells the story of Sophie, a girl whose innocence, kindness, and bravery allows her to escape her wicked stepmother/duchess. The stories are detailed and the characters are well-rounded, so if you’re looking for a more in-depth perspective on fairytale princesses, Dickerson’s books are great for that. 

Hettie MacDonald has amazed me with her work on the television show Howards End. The show is set in the early 20th century and is based on E.M. Forster’s classic novel of the same name. Howards End tells the story of the three Schlegels siblings living on their own with the inheritance left to them after the death of a wealthy matriarch. The show has gotten great reviews, and it’s family-friendly, fun to watch, and full of intriguing characters. 

Just getting both Dickerson and MacDonald together is a story on its own, but if both of them could work on a movie adaptation of Dickerson’s books, it would be a game changer! Dickerson writes love stories that are captivating and mesmerizing, whereas MacDonald shines when creating adaptations like Doctor Who and Howards End. If both of them were to work together they might be able to pull off a new beloved romance movie series that might even be as popular as the original Disney princess movies. 

It won’t only take the efforts of Dickerson and MacDonald to pull this off — there will have to be a strong team of producers, actors, editors, designers, costume designers and more to put the series together. However, if Dickerson and MacDonald met and discussed the possibility of the film series, it would become that much more possible.