There are a number of givens when one is confronted with a Nicholas Sparks story, the surest thing being that you will cry. Oh yes, you will weep. That is, if you're one of the many out there predisposed to falling under the spell of Sparks's carefully crafted, timeworn magic formula of love, tears, and tragedy. But how does this week's Zac Efron-starring The Lucky One measure up to its predecessors in terms of The Sparks Quotient?
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The off-Broadway musical adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie may have outlasted its 1988 stage predecessor by four times the stage run, but it died nonetheless last weekend -- two weeks early! The NYT has the post-mortem: "Several theater producers contacted recently said that Carrie, no matter how well acted and sung, presented far more than the usual share of difficulties, the most insurmountable being that nearly every character is dead at the end....Several reviewers complained about certain songs and a one-note blandness in the high school scenes, but the sharpest criticism was that Carrie had been de-camped to the point of dullness." Chloe Moretz, you're our last hope! [NYT via Movie City News]
Wrath of the Titans actor Toby Kebbell (Control, RocknRolla) was once up for the part of Tetsuo in Warner Bros.' live-action adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's cyberpunk manga and anime Akira -- but with the project stalled, he unleashed some real talk on the direction the studio intended on taking the big-budget franchise. Among WB's plans: They wanted to adapt the anime and not the richer source material of the mangas, and planned on taking certain liberties with key character relationships to boot. “I was like, ‘The point is that Tetsuo can’t comprehend how someone who isn’t his brother could love him so much — and that’s where his wrath and his rage come from. Do you not see that? Why have you made them brothers? What the fuck are you doing?’” [IFC via Collider]
Today in horrifying reboot news comes the stuff of past and future nightmares: "Michael Eisner’s The Tornante Company will finance and produce the development of a feature film based on Garbage Pail Kids, the trading card line published by Topps." Viral video/shorts helmer PES will direct based on the terrifying 1985 trading cards, which were previously adapted into one of the worst feature films of all time featuring the most disgusting child characters ever created who scared an entire generation of youngsters into not judging their freaky looking but well-meaning peers by their looks alone. Or something. So... yay? [Deadline]
Following in the footsteps of hit musical adaptations Billy Elliot, Wicked, and Bring It On: The Musical, Universal's stage adaptation of John Landis's Animal House will hit Broadway with a book by playwright Michael Mitnick, to be directed by Book of Mormon's Casey Nicholaw, with music by the guys who sang the indelible lyrics "Chickity China the Chinese chicken/You have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin'." Because nothing says "Broadway" like frat boys and crunchy Canadian alt-rock, right? [THR]
Woody Allen, whose Midnight in Paris is competing at this Sunday's Academy Awards, will be bringing his Oscar-nominated 1994 comedy Bullets Over Broadway to the Great White Way in 2013, reports the New York Times. The adaptation has long been rumored to be in the works; Allen himself is writing the book, with songs culled from existing 1920s-era music. Cue obligatory Dianne Wiest quotes! [NYT]
With this morning's news that Disney is courting Never Let Me Go director Mark Romanek to helm a Cinderella remake, it has become even more apparent that Hollywood is not going to keep its hands off of our Disney princesses. (Already, we have at least two Snow White reboots underway, one sensual Little Mermaid project in development, and a Hailee Steinfeld Sleeping Beauty redo.) In fear of which princess project will be announced next, Movieline has outlined four worst-case-scenario Disney adaptations that might make, say, the inevitable live-action Pocahontas action reboot seem less horrific in comparison.
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The insanely busy Bryan Cranston, whose upcoming slate includes Contagion, Drive, Total Recall, John Carter, Rock of Ages, Red Tails, World War Z, and Argo, has revealed plans to direct his own adaptation of David Wiltse's novel, Home Again. The crime thriller/mystery drama follows an ex-FBI agent who returns to his family in small town Nebraska only to become caught up in a murder investigation.
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This just in from Deadline: Dimension Films, who has the rights to David Cronenberg's 1981 telepath sci-fi horror pic Scanners, is adapting the genre film not into further sequels or remakes but into a television series. French horror director Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D) will exec produce the drama and may direct the pilot. [Deadline]
Screenwriting duo Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely began their partnership in college, moved to Los Angeles together ("We watched Baywatch and thought, 'Somebody wrote Baywatch -- we could do that!'" quips McFeely), wrote a film for Bill Pullman, scripted The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and caught the eye of Andrew Adamson, who then hired them to write all three Chronicles of Narnia films. Now they've penned Captain America: The First Avenger, the latest in Marvel Studios' multi-film Avengers franchise and a rollicking WWII-set adventure that they hope to follow up with a sequel. It's safe to say Markus and McFeely might have some wise words to share on the subject of their craft.
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Captain Planet and the Planeteers, among the cheesiest children's properties that the '90s birthed, was a cartoon very earnestly devoted to encouraging environmental awareness among youngsters built around the multi-colored titular superhero. Now, thanks to the folks who brought us Transformers, that mulleted, blue-skinned emblem of early-'90s morning TV will be updated with a live-action film. Has retro rebirthing gone too far?
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Well, if we weren't going to get Natalie Portman in Lionsgate's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies adaptation, Emma Stone makes for a feisty replacement. Stone has reportedly been offered the role of heroine Elizabeth Bennet in the Craig Gillespie-directed pic, based on Seth Grahame-Smith's popular parody spin, which introduces an undead epidemic to Jane Austen's classic novel.
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Speaking with the U.K.'s Telegraph, Angelina Jolie addressed the inevitable comparisons between her future performance as Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra and Elizabeth Taylor's iconic 1963 turn. "My performance will never be as lovely as Elizabeth's," she demurred, explaining that her David Fincher-directed version will be a more realistic biopic. For example, this Cleopatra won't be a seducer. So what can you look forward to from Jolie's Queen of the Nile?
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Man, directors are dropping like flies out of high profile projects these days. Hot on the heels of David O. Russell's departure from Uncharted: Drake's Fortune comes news that Albert Hughes is leaving Warner Bros.' Akira adaptation. Chime in with your favorite proposed Akira director below, but consider the bigger question for now: Just what kind of Akira movie does Warner Bros. want to make?
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Writer Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box, Locke & Key) has sold adaptation rights to his short story Twittering from the Circus of the Dead, a horror tale told from the Tweets of a teenage girl as her road-tripping family runs across a zombie circus. Todd Lincoln (the forthcoming The Apparition) will direct from a script by Chris Borelli; sample Hill's tale, 140 words at a time, by following fictional heroine Blake Teller (@TYME2WASTE) on the Twitter. LOL ZOM (BIE) G! [THR]
