Little Mermaid reimagining gets director?

Country Strong director Shana Feste in talks to write and direct Mermaid adaptation

A few years ago, vampires were pretty much where it was at. Between sparkly ones, civil war ones and high school student ones with evil brothers, TV and film audiences couldn’t move for bitey fangs and cheekbones. Now it looks as if a splashier contender has come along to challenge their reign.
Working their way up the mystical creatures register, climbing from occasional player all the way up to rival vamps for ubiquity
status, comes the humble mermaid. Not only did scary mermaids provide the only atmospheric moments in Rob Marshall’s Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides, but there are currently not one, but two film reworkings of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid in the pipeline.
It was announced today that former Spidey Tobey Maguire is to produce the adaptation of Carolyn Turgeon’s 2011 book Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale, with Country Strong director Shana Feste in talks to write and direct.
This comes in addition to last year’s news that Atonement and Hanna director Joe Wright is currently working on a live-action version of the Andersen tale as well as his adaptation of Tolstoy tragedy Anna Karenina.
Last October, Wright told the press that his version of The Little Mermaid would stay much closer to Anderson’s story while remaining “a film for all the family”.
Not quite sure where that leaves him in terms of hanging onto Andersen’s darker moments. The original fairy tale has a girl’s tongue being cut out as a prelude to her walking barefoot on sharp knives, being urged to commit murder by her sisters and eventually sacrificing herself… I’m guessing he probably means there’ll be no singing West Indian crabs in this one.

Submitted by Louisa Mellor

on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 10:40

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