The developmentally challenged remake of “My Fair Lady,” which has proceeded in fits and starts all year, now has new life once again as John Madden has officially thrown his name in the ring as a potential director.
Variety’s report on the gestating film is pretty detail heavy which makes us think that Madden may be the one to finally to get the ball on this rolling. According to the trade magazine, the film is going to more closely follow the original George Bernard Shaw play “Pygmalion” than the 1964 outing with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, and will hold onto the original songs, 1912 settings and original London locations. As for Keira Knightley, who has long been attached to the film, she is still in the running for Eliza Doolittle though her name hasn’t yet been signed on the dotted line.
For the producers, we would guess that the hiring of John Madden is as much to do with his awards record than with the fact that the director needs a hit. After “Shakespeare In Love,” the director fell down a rabbit hole of increasingly worse films, culminating in the unintentionally hilarious and wonky assassin drama “Killshot.” Unlike Danny Boyle, Baz Luhrmann or even Stephen Daldry, who have all tentatively approached the film at some point, Madden probably doesn’t have much ammunition if he wants to take the remake in a different direction, and will probably acquiesce easily to the producers (safe) vision for the project.
While we’re always happy to see the oft derided musical genre given a shot, we can’t say we’re too thrilled about the film that will do little to differentiate it from the Hepburn/Harrison classic. There is no word yet on when this will get in front of cameras, but given that a cast and rehearsals still have to be put together our guess is mid-2010 at the earliest.