'Downton Abbey' creator to adapt 'Gypsy'

Most Hollywood remakes and adaptations these days involve pretty familiar properties. Current Broadway hits, movies made in the 1980s--it seems like the window for remakes is getting shorter and shorter.So I'm happily surprised to report that Universal has a movie adaptation of Gypsy on the table. Based on a 1957 memoir, it first became a successful Broadway musical in 1959 and then a 1962 film starring Natalie Wood and Rosalind Russell. A 2008 Broadway revival starring Patti LuPone won several Tonys. The remake will team up some of Hollywood's legends and newly renowned.

Fans of "Downton Abbey" may be a little surprised that the show's creator, 62-year-old Julian Fellowes, will write the adaptation of the musical. The writer/actor generally focuses on historical British pieces,  so writing a story about an American burlesque performer and her stage mom is quite a departure.

What really sells this adaptation is casting. Barbra Streisand will play the musical's legendary stage mom of all stage moms. The character is considered the gold standard of stage mom behavior, with plenty of negative qualities usually on display only during an episode of TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras."

Universal is currently shepherding this project, though it previously had a home at Warner Bros. The adaptation was held up in the past due to the reservations of the writer of the book, Arthur Laurents. He passed away last May, so the producers will no longer have to deal with his opposition.

If Gypsy can reel in a new audience with material that's as compelling as its previous iterations, I think the movie will be a success. The backstage musical is one of the best ways to integrate music into a film, and audiences deserve better than dreck like Burlesque.

Director Rob Marshall ventures 'Into the Woods'

By Sarah Sluis

The familiar musical line "I wish.." will now be heard in movie theatres as well as Broadway theatres. Director Rob Marshall plans to adapt a film version of the 1980s musical Into the Woods. The movie would be his third film musical after Chicago and Nine. Like many musicals, it will have a built-in audience. With its popular junior version, Into the Woods is now a pretty standard piece for middle and high schools to adapt, especially with its friendly, fairy tale-influenced storyline. With its inclusion of Red Riding Hood, Jack the Giant Killer, princes, and witches, Into the Woods actually is something of a predecessor to Shrek.

Lately, it seems as if a lot of Broadway musicals are getting the film treatment. Mamma Mia!, The Phantom of the Opera, Dreamgirls, Rent, Hairspray, and Sweeney Todd have all been made into films with mixed success. GK Films just hired John Logan (Hugo) to write the script for the 2006 musical Jersey Boys, which I actually think could do quite well in a film version.

Marshall hopes to start Into the Woods sooner rather than later, but he's also committed to directing Johnny Depp in The Thin Man, a redo of a set of 1940s films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. He hasn't decided which film he will direct first. What's interesting about this production is that the play's creators, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, will retool the musical for the film version. Sondheim actually plans to write new songs for the film, which is pretty rare as far as I can tell. The production will move forward under Disney, with whom Marshall just signed a two-year first-look contract. With Marshall developing two different projects, the only question is when.

Amanda Seyfried and Taylor Swift join cast of Les Miz

By Sarah Sluis

Amanda Seyfried as Cosette and Taylor Swift as Eponine are the latest additions to Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper's (The King's Speech) production of Les Misrables. The musical will shoot in March with plans to release during holiday prime time, December 7, 2012. I have mixed feelings about the casting, mainly of Swift.

Swift may be able to sing, but she has a fakeness to her acting that came across even during her brief role in Valentine's Day. Those who aren't fans of the country songstress may take comfort in the horrible trajectory of her character's life. She is the daughter of the Thnardier family, which took a girl, Cosette, in and abused her. Eponine was the Thnardier's true daughter, but as an adult she pines for a man who is only in love with Cosette.

Seyfried's role is much bigger than Eponine's. I've been so surprised to see Seyfried's career take off since she first played the airhead friend in Mean Girls. In Mamma Mia! she showed she can handle musicals, and Slash Film reports she's trained as an opera singer--a big plus.

Seyfried and Swift join a cast that's studded with big names and Oscar nominations. Hugh Jackman plays the beleagured Jean ValJean, Russell Crowe the hard-nosed Inspector Javert, and Anne Hathaway the pitiful Fontaine. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter will play the Thnardiers, tavern owners who mistreat Cosette but are also something of an evil caricature in the stage version (perhaps to soften the blow). Baron Cohen and Carter both have experience in these kinds of roles, so they're cast quite well. Eddie Redmayne, who plays the young man pining for Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, will provide the third point to the love triangle between Cosette, Eponine, and his character, Marius. Les Misrables is an incredibly ambitious musical to pull off on screen, but as a fan of the musical and Hooper's work, I will definitely see the film version, for better or worse.

Will Smith and daughter Willow may remake 'Annie'

By Sarah Sluis

Will Smith is creating a family empire. Last summer, the box-office dynamo shepherded his son Jaden through his first solo starring role, the hit remake of The Karate Kid. Smith had previously starred in The Pursuit of Happyness with Jaden as his son, and now it appears he wants to take a similar route with his daughter, Willow. The ten-year-old would star with her father in a remake of Annie. She would play the titular orphan, and it's presumed Smith will take on the Daddy Warbucks role. Jay-Z, who
famously remixed "Hard Knock Life" a decade ago, plans to collaborate on the music.

The fact that Jay-Z plans to work on the music hints that this could be a new kind of musical with rap and pop influences. The actors would be able to hold their own: Smith had several hits as a rapper, and his daughter Willow recently released an album featuring the rap/pop single "Whip My Hair." Annie is one of my favorite musicals, but I'm not a purist: I would welcome the opportunity to see the story re-framed not as a Depression-era tale but one reflecting the struggles of another impoverished environment, such as an urban ghetto. I'm sure that the orphanage could be reimagined, as could the mission of the hucksters who want to game the system and reclaim Annie as their own for personal reward. I'd actually prefer if they kept the historical distance, however, perhaps setting the movie during the nadir of urban decay in the '80s (making a rap-influenced score much more plausible).

Musicals have a hard time in the marketplace, but there are some successes that bode well for the reboot of this movie. One has been the resurgence of the musical on TV with the success of "Glee," which puts well-known songs into the hand of a high school chorus/glee club. Second has been the success of the Step Up series, which is not so much a backstage musical as a backstage dance-off, with digressive dance numbers that audiences accept and enjoy, to the point that the series has spawned two sequels with one more in the making.

Annie may not be an original idea, but a remake under the supervision of Will Smith and Jay-Z has the chance to turn the story into an emblem of another zeitgeist and infuse the songs with the sounds of a modern era and "Tomorrow."