Director Elizabeth Banks’ forthcoming Charlie’s Angels reboot is positioning itself as a more highbrow adaptation of the classic TV series, and its newest addition to the creative team certainly has the credentials to prove it. The film just landed David Auburn, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his play Proof, to pen the screenplay.
As The Hollywood Reporter puts it, Auburn’s hiring will make this new Angels outing a movie with “more class, less ass,” putting the focus squarely on empowering its titular females rather than ogling them. The screenwriter explained in a statement to THR, “Elizabeth Banks is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, in or out of show business, and I am thrilled to be working with her on a reinvented Charlie’s Angels that’s grounded, edgy, subversive, smart and fun.”
Auburn has had a curious career in Hollywood so far, co-writing the screenplay for the 2005 film version of Proof, then penning the script for the Sandra Bullock-Keanu Reeves time-traveling romance The Lake House, among a smattering of other projects. Just how that previous experience will translate into a big-budgeted action film is unclear, though as Banks told THR in her own statement, “His ability to create three new dynamic yet grounded Angels is very exciting.”
Banks herself has been carving out an eclectic, sometimes head-scratching niche for herself as of late, from her ostentatious Hunger Games character to directing Pitch Perfect 2 to nabbing the role of a completely unrecognizable Rita in next year’s Power Rangers reboot. So in that regard, her odd-on-the-surface pairing with Auburn makes some sense. It seems a bit unnecessary to resurrect Charlie’s Angels again (especially after the much-maligned, quickly canceled TV reboot from 2011), but based on the production’s quirky hiring choices, we’re definitely curious to see what Banks and co. can do with the familiar franchise.
(Via: The Hollywood Reporter)
