Disney Tosses David Mamet's Diary of Anne Frank Into Turnaround
A couple of things about David Mamet's The Diary of Anne Frank, that recently announced remake you know you were never totally comfortable with: First of all, it's not a straight "remake" at all, but rather a contemporary exploration of anti-Semitism. And second of all -- and this should really help you relax about the project -- it's not going to be made anyway. At least not at Disney.
The Wrap reports that Mamet's much-discussed (and parodied) project is a casualty of cold feet at Disney, which has seen a minor bit of turbulence in the last week and is determined to take a more careful route back to mega-profitability. Thus production chief Oren Aviv's decision to knock the film into turnaround; Mamet's script is simply "too dark" for Disney's taste, sources say.
Too dark? As if there's a way to sweeten one of the 20th century's best-known tragedies, right? Well, no, but that's part of Disney's problem: This isn't actually The Diary of Anne Frank to begin with:
[T]he screenplay is not a retelling of the famous Holocaust drama taken from the diaries of Frank, but about a contemporary Jewish girl who goes to Israel and learns about the traumas of suicide bombing.
"It's very intense, and dark and scary," said the executive. "It's not a film version of The Diary of Anne Frank. The story evolved into something more intense."
So basically it's Mamet's Inglourious Basterds, but with better source material, a more urgent moral imperative and improved spelling. Harvey Weinstein will take it, thank you very much.
· Mamet's Anne Frank in Turnaround from Disney [The Wrap]
Comments
STUDIO HEAD (bites lip, sucks in air): Does she have to be Jewish?
STUDIO HEAD (picks Blackberry off desk, avoiding Mamet's eyes) And does she really have to die at the end?
Wasn't the original diary about the Holocaust?
Couldn't that be considered intense, dark, and scary?
Well, damn. I was wondering how much makeup it would take to turn Rebecca Pidgeon a convincing 15-year-old girl....
Alright, when the hell did Samuel L. Jackson contract vitiligo?