One of the most prevalent trends in Hollywood over the past few years is the incessant need to alter classic works like "Alice In Wonderland” or fairy tales like “Snow White” and turn them into giant, ponderous blockbusters. We’ve already had the overblown take on a Grimm fairy tale with “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters,” and next month sees the release of the similarly overblown “Jack the Giant Killer.” Well, prepare for yourself for the blockbuster take on Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist.”
Set to be written by Cole Haddon, something of a specialist with revisionist fare as co-creator of NBC’s upcoming (and dreadful-sounding) “Dracula” series and scribe behind the developing "The Strange Case Of Hyde," “Dodge And Twist” will catch up with Twist and the pickpocketing Jack Dawkins aka Artful Dodger twenty years after the end of Dickens’ novel. The plot? Well, it might as well be "Sherlock Holmes 3" as the pair “are on opposite sides of the law and get embroiled in an affair to steal the Crown Jewels.”
We can’t imagine that there are many teenagers jonesing for a gritty take on “Oliver Twist,” so we’re at a loss why anyone feels the need to connect a Victorian-set heist film — which on its own sounds interesting enough — to such a classic book that most of the target audience only read, if they have at all, in English classes. And why stop there? Surely there’s more classic novels dying to be turned into tentpole features. Where’s our gritty action-film take on “Tess of the D’Ubervilles”? The sci-fi take on "The Golden Bowl"? Sadly, none of those ideas would surprise us if they were happening. [THR]