No Country For Young Women? Scott Rudin, Sony Pictures, In Talks For Little House On The Prairie

These hardscrabble times deserve a movie about hardscrabble life.  So, it's not surprising to see Deadline's Mike Fleming report that Sony Pictures and Scott Rudin are talking about making a feature film based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic book series about 19th-century farm life in the West,  Little House On The Prairie. Judging from the players who appear to be coalescing around the project though, the Little House movie will be True Grit-tier — and, possibly, funnier — than the popular shucks-and-darn NBC TV series that ran from 1974-83.

Rudin, who produced No Country for Old Men,  True Grit and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, likes to serve up culture that explores the darker aspects of humanity.  Even the whimsical Moonrise Kingdom had two very troubled teens at the center of its story. Director David Gordon Green is best known for directing two smart-ass comedies,  Pineapple Express and The Sitter,  which really has me hoping that Seth Rogen will play Pa Ingalls as a homegrown hemp-smoking pioneer. And Abi Morgan wrote the screenplays for The Iron Lady and Shame, which were not exactly family-friendly movies.  I'd love to see what Morgan would do with one of my favorite weird lines from the TV series. When Nellie Oleson, the 19th-century equivalent of a mean girl complains that Laura Ingalls too often does not smell as girlie as she should and often stinks of sweat and/or fish,  Laura replies: "I sweat a lot and I fish a lot!"  [Deadline]

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