First works Upon the completion of her master's degree, Woolverton formed her own children's theater company. She wrote, directed and performed all over California in churches, malls, schools, and local theaters. She also began to work as a creative drama instructor in 1979. Released in 1986 and 1987, respectively, both were published by
Houghton Mifflin. During this time, Woolverton began penning scripts for children's television shows. From 1986 to 1989, she wrote episodes for animated series as
Star Wars: Ewoks,
Dennis the Menace,
The Real Ghostbusters,
The Berenstain Bears,
My Little Pony and ''
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers''.
Works for Disney Woolverton was hired to write the script for
Disney Feature Animation's
Beauty and the Beast, thus becoming the first woman to write an animated feature for the studio. Released in 2010,
Alice in Wonderland earned more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office, making Woolverton the first female screenwriter with a sole writing credit on a
film that grossed $1 billion.
Maleficent was released in 2014. She subsequently wrote the screenplays of the sequels for both of those films—
Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) and
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019).
Other works Woolverton wrote the book of the Broadway musical
Lestat, an adaptation of
The Vampire Chronicles by
Anne Rice, which pre-debuted in 2005 in San Francisco to become the highest-earning pre-Broadway play in the city's history. The musical opened on Broadway in 2006. She co-wrote the narration script of the
National Geographic theatrical
documentary film Arctic Tale, released in 2007. In 2014, she announced that she was pitching a
pilot for a television series. It was later announced that
Lifetime had decided to adapt the novel
The Clan of the Cave Bear with Woolverton as executive-producer of the series and writer of the pilot episode. However, Lifetime decided to pass on the series when the network and the producers of
Fox 21 could not agreed on an episode count. ==Themes==