I am not telling you anything new when I say that vampires have been a popular theme in both big screen and small screen entertainment for some time now. As audiences are growing tired of the bloodsuckers, Hollywood is slowly substituting them for their natural counterparts: werewolves. The Twilight Saga has both. Or not quite… in the sense that they have their own brand of vampire. One that doesn’t adhere to the mythology and can be lusted after during daytime as well. The news this week was that its final chapter (Breaking Dawn) will be a two-parter with the second part being released in November of 2012. This led to some groaning on the blogs along the lines of (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Two more years of this sh*t!?”.
This week also saw some casting news regarding Vamps, a comedic take on the subject matter (quite gutsy, considering earlier attempts) which seems a bit late to the party (and doesn’t have any werewolves in it, as far as I know). But Amy Heckerling is the writer/director in question, so who knows… she may pull it off. Celebuzz has some on-set photos of stars Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter.
But as I said, the real future lies with werewolves. Of the attempts to work with the theme (The Girl with the) Red Riding Hood is currently the most intriguing film in production. It is a re-telling of the folk tale starring the Big Bad Werewolf, which has of course been done before. Not much is known yet about this latest attempt so we don’t know if the excellent source material will get an inspired update or will just be used to churn out a Twilight clone. For now, the on-set photos of star Amanda Seyfried wearing horns that surfaced this week led to confusion and an overused pun amongst bloggers.
Amanda Seyfried at set of Red Riding Hood
In other lupine news, the LA Times reports this week on the plans to remake An American Werewolf in London, which is cause for some anxiety among bloggers: don’t mess with the classics.
But wait, messing with the classics is exactly what is sparking a welcome bit of originality with regards to the undead. I am of course talking about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Instead of regurgitating old material as Hollywood is doing, writer Seth Grahame-Smith brilliantly mashed things up to create something new and unique (although in fiction, that trend has already had its best days). Now it looks like the screen adaptation is slowly coming together. Natalie Portman has picked it up to produce and star in and she told MTV that David O. Russel is writing the screenplay and will direct the film. It looks like the stars are definitely aligning for this one.
Cheat Cut 