Ever wonder what a Papa Roach cover of “Under the Sea” might sound like? You may still find out, now that Sony is moving forward with a reimagining of The Little Mermaid. If you guessed that this reimagining involves making the source dark™er and more gritty®, congratulations, you’ve read a Hollywood trade before. It’s funny, it doesn’t seem like making something dark and gritty would take much imagining at all, let alone RE-imagining.
Incidentally, Firefox spellcheck still doesn’t recognize the word “reimagining.” I envy you, Firefox, I really do.
Hans Christian Andersens’ The Little Mermaid is the latest fairy tale to follow into the studios thirst for reimaginings*. [How do you “follow into” a “thirst”? Oh nevermind. -Ed]
Sony has picked up Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale, a book by Carolyn Turgeon, for Country Strong filmmaker Shana Feste to write and direct [yes, the woman who tried to make Gwyneth Paltrow a country singer. -Ed]. Tobey Maguire and Jenno Topping, who worked with Feste on Country Strong, are producing.
The story gets its point of view shifted and the tone is definitely not Disney. It centers on a princess who, in order to save her ravaged kingdom, sets out on a dangerous journey to marry the prince of her rival kingdom, not knowing that a beautiful mermaid has fallen for the same man and has sacrificed everything to be with him. [HollywoodReporter]
At least it’s based on a book. Usually producers of dark reimaginings of fairy tales aren’t into books, because the covers clash with their graphic t-shirts of energy drinks. Wait, did you say one of the producers was Tobey Maguire? Why, this doesn’t sound like a Tobey Maguire project at all. He’s such a nice boy. In fact, I suspect this might be the work of… EMO TOBEY MAGUIRE!
*Not to be confused with the planned Joe Wright 3D reimagining of The Little Mermaid that was based on a stage play with puppets.