ConnieAndCarla Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Four years after Connie and Carla failed to set the world on fire, Nia Vardalos has left the writing to someone else while returning to the safe turf of Greece for her new film, My Life in Ruins. Vardalos plays an Athens tour guide tired of all the grating tourists, obnoxious locals, and scheming colleagues in her life, and if the trailer -- link removed at request of studio -- (for those who don't mind Greek subtitles) is any indication, things might just change for the better soon enough.

There has yet to be any specific Stateside release date announced -- Fox Searchlight tentatively has it scheduled for 2009 -- but the crowdpleaser pedigree of Vardalos and director Donald Petrie certainly doesn't hurt the film's chances of outgrossing the $8 million that Connie raked in theatrically (whether or not the downright loud pairing of Harland Williams and Rachel Dratch will is a different story).

Also in the name of safe-bet follow-ups is I Hate Valentine's Day, a rom-com written and directed by Vardalos that reunites her with My Big Fat Greek Wedding love interest John Corbett. That project also bears an equally vague '09 release date, but I have trouble thinking that it couldn't be out of post-production and in theaters by next February.

She hasn't delivered anything monumental since My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but actress/Oscar-nominated (ugh) screenwriter Nia Vardalos has been working hard enough to keep her career going. Following Connie and Carla, the bomb that was her follow-up to her big fat successful Wedding, she has written A Wilderness of Monkeys for director Tom Hanks (who co-produced Wedding with wife Rita Wilson), which has supposedly been completed, and the Greece-set comedy My Life in Ruins. Also, she has possibly been working on a Big Fat Greek sequel. Her next script, though, has been announced as I Hate Valentine's Day, another culture-clashing romantic comedy in which she will again star. This one will be directed by Nick Hurran (Little Black Book) and will co-star James Purefoy as Vardalos' love interest.

Purefoy, who is best known for his work portraying Mark Antony in HBO's Rome series, will play a man who dates and then dumps Vardalos' character. The thing is, once rejected, the woman ends up falling in love with the guy. Originally, Vardalos wrote the male role as American, but she has since been rewriting the part for Purefoy, who is British. Now the character is being conceived as a foreigner who doesn't understand American women. Vardalos says the film, which begins shooting in Toronto this summer, will be for everybody (I doubt it will be for me), and will tackle the idea of forced and expected ideas of romance, particularly the kind of ideas that come with the Valentine's holiday.

It has been four years since Nia Vardalos hit it big (really big) with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the surprisingly high-grossing independent film that she wrote and starred in. So what has she been doing since, you wonder? Oh, you mean you weren't aware that she wrote and starred in another movie two years ago, which tanked almost as tremendously as Wedding scored? It was called Connie and Carla, in case you want to look it up. Now she might be returning to the one thing that could keep her relevant -- a My Big Fat sequel. She claims that she felt pressure to do a sequel after the original film became so successful, but she ran out of ideas and suffered a horrible case of writer's block. She told WENN, "I'm not saying there will for sure be a sequel, but I'm not saying there will for sure not be a sequel." She also mentioned that she could make it about nearly anything as long as she includes the "My Big Fat Greek" part to the title, though it won't be about a divorce.

Obviously, if Vardalos is really going to write a sequel, then she's still out of ideas. It was bad enough that she helped turn her film into a TV series, and the fact that said series was a failure should be enough of a hint to move on. But who in Hollywood really ever runs from a cash cow? Anyway, according to the IMDb, Vardalos has another project in pre-production at Universal called A Wilderness of Monkeys, so it doesn't really seem like she's desperate or being pressured right now.