AnnPeacock Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Those of us who suffered through Warner Bros' Troy were always kind of hoping they'd reward us by making the obvious sequel of The Odyssey. Now they are. Variety reports that the studio has nabbed "Odysseus," a spec script by Ann Peacock, and has assigned Jonathan Liebesman to direct.

Here I should stress that it's not officially a sequel to Troy but it might as well be, since it will follow that "real world" vision they set up with their earlier Homer rewrite. The movie won't be the tale of Odysseus' really lousy trip home from the Trojan War, but what happens when he finally gets back to his kingdom of Ithaca which he "finds under the brutal occupation of an invading force." Now this is true to the poem in that Odysseus finds all those wannabe husbands eating him out of house and home, and Penelope trying her best to fend them off. But they're not an invading force, they're local boys having a lot of fun, and their families don't take kindly to Odysseus slaughtering them all. War nearly breaks out between Odysseus and all of Ithaca until Athena intervenes, and forces them to make peace.

So yeah, there's a movie there, and the Muse will always start where she will. But it wouldn't be nearly as much fun as the Cyclops, the Sirens, Circe turning men into pigs (ha ha!), the Underworld, faithful Penelope and manwhore Odysseus (so good in bed that Calypso refuses to release him for years). I'm enough of a classics nerd that I could sit through a whole Odyssey trilogy if Warner Bros would just make the whole sprawling saga. I know I'm not alone in that. Still, if this is the version they're going to go with, could we at least have Sean Bean reprise the role?

Back in February of this year, I posted about the American Girl doll Kit Kittredge, who was finally making her way to the big screen by means of HBO, who had taken the reigns from Walden Media. A "resourceful girl during the Great Depression," Kit is a writer who tries to keep life going through her words. Mansfield Park director Patricia Rozema helmed the movie, titled Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, from Narnia scribe Ann Peacock's script, and it has one heck of a good cast for a family film. Abigail Breslin is starring as Kit, Chris O'Donnell and Julia Ormond are her parents, Stanley Tucci and Joan Cusack are her uncle and aunt, and there's also Wallace Shawn as a Register reporter.

Now, finally, a trailer has popped up over at the film's American Girl website. It's looking like a cute, retro Nancy Drew, with mystery spy equipment traded in for an old-school typewriter and Breslin's insidious quirk. As the story goes, Kit is a writer, and a kid, who is trying to get her foot in the door at the local paper. Obviously, she isn't taken very seriously, but gets involved with a mystery to get the scoop and get the job. Breslin looks cute as the lead, although I have to say that I'm most intrigued by Joan Cusack's stint as some wild-driving crazy aunt. (That, and it's nice to see her co-star without brother John.) Nancy Drew had only a moderate response, so I'm wondering if putting the girl in the retro period, rather than putting her in retro clothes in modern-day, will help the film out. Besides, the flick already has a whole legion of girls with American Girl dolls waiting to see this.

Walden Media is trucking on with its numerous book adaptation projects. Heck, in the last 7 months, there's been word about Clive Barker's Edgar Allan Poe thriller for kids, The Screwtape Letters, The Dark is Rising, Edward Gorey's The Doubtful Guest and Bill Murray starring in City of Ember. That's not including projects they've bowed out on, like The Giver and the American Girl adaptations. Now Variety is reporting that the company will adapt Lauren St. John's children's book, The White Giraffe, for AnnaSophia Robb to star in. Robb was most recently in the Hilary Swank thriller The Reaping, but she's also the gal who played Leslie in Bridge to Terabithia and Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The movie will be directed by Gabor Csupo, who worked with Robb in Terabithia and it will be adapted by Ann Peacock, who not only adapted The Chronicles of Narnia and the Kit Kittredge film, but is from South Africa, where the book is based.

Giraffe is about a young girl named Martine who is orphaned and sent to live with her grandmother on a game reserve in South Africa. She doesn't feel welcomed by her grandmother or school, but finds two friends, one of whom "instantly senses there is something special about Martine." After hearing about a fabled white giraffe, she ends up spotting one and begins a series of "mysterious and magical adventures." And somehow in there, she discovers that she has a gift for healing. Barely into her teens, it's pretty obvious that Robb is going places. Beyond the high-profile work that she's been in recently, she's also got a slew of films coming our way, including Have Dreams, Will Travel and Jumper. However, much of her work is family-oriented so the only question that remains is whether this is the start of a long, cinematic life, or be a child-star-turned-unknown.