Disney Rebooting "Miss Marple"

[ibrmacf]

I know this has nothing to do with animation (hence by my putting it in the Outside the Lines section), but I just want to know if anybody else here is upset at this contemporization of an Agatha Christie character:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... -film.html

[Ben]

Well, this is an "American contemporary adaptation", so it's just another take on the character, just as the recent (and excellent) Sherlock was for the BBC.

It doesn't replace the originals, and goodness knows Marple's been done to death over the years as much as Sherlock Holmes. Just because there's a new contemporary twist on the stories doesn't mean we won't get another more accurate portrayal in the coming years.

[GeorgeC]

Between the next more faithful interpretation and whatever-the-producers-and-writers decide [INSERT FAVORITE CHARACTER HERE] is, you can bet for an entire generation of viewers that they'll decide today's version is "definitive" even if they've never read the books!

That's what always disturbs me about filmmakers. You can bet a bunch of them are only informed through other movies and have never picked up a book in their lifetimes! For that matter, most of the audience will never read the original versions, either.

This is why I cringe every time when I hear someone is doing an adaptation of a character that I loved in print. It's nothing short of a miracle when accurate adaptations get made... the rest of the time it's SOP and the fans that have been waiting for faithful adaptations are SOL!

[EricJ]

Well, this is an "American contemporary adaptation", so it's just another take on the character, just as the recent (and excellent) Sherlock was for the BBC.
It doesn't replace the originals, and goodness knows Marple's been done to death over the years as much as Sherlock Holmes.)

...Um, she has?
Hercule Poirot, definitely, but most people in the States can't even name three Marple movies. (Or, if they do remember Angela Lansbury in "The Mirror Crack'd", they think they're remembering "Murder She Wrote".)
I'm no fan of Margaret Rutherford (apart from the theme song), and Geraldine McEwan retired the jersey, but over here, it's still one of those great unexplored characters people either don't know or think they know but don't know the stories.

(Which probably explains Disney's reaction:
Mark Frost obviously sold a "real" adaptation; Disney got nervous about little old ladies, but demographically thought "Female detectives working empoweredly on their own?...Oh, you mean like ALIAS! "
That's when a project dies out in pre-production when they can't make it fit. At least Warner thought they were going to get a CW series out of that "modern Nancy Drew" a few years ago.)

[Ben]

Well, leaving Poirot out of it (because he's yet to have a contemporary take), but...yes, actually.

While not as perhaps as prolific as Sherlock - at least in the States - Marple has been the subject of other movies than just the Rutherford and Lansbury films, as well as McEwan and a long-running TV version with Joan Hickson (the "female antidote" to Jeremy Brett-era Holmes), as well as a recent version that played over here as just in the last year or two (an attempt to pick up with Marple where the David Suchet Poirot has ended).

So with at least five or more approaches over the years, yeah, I'd say she was up there with some of the more regularly adapted characters, and this is just the latest literary translation to our times. As I say, I quite like 'em: it's good to see different takes on much used material to keep things fresh, and they can always go back and make a more faithful version again later.

[EricJ]

Well, leaving Poirot out of it (because he's yet to have a contemporary take), but...yes, actually.

(Well, he DID, actually, but no one noticed, and they kept him to character:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0279250/
And even then the gimmick was trying to "improve" the story with a modern adaptation, and not "apologize" for it by making Poirot younger and American to identify with...)

[Ben]

You're right...no one noticed!

But I would argue that a "modern" Orient Express isn't exactly the cutting edge contemporary style take that Sherlock and this new Marple are forging.

[EricJ]

One report had Jennifer Garner as co-producer on the project--
Which means she probably didn't pick up on 'Little old ladies knitting", but "Average small-town housewife goes detecting".
If she wants to remake that, she can remake the old 70's "Mrs. Columbo" series (or at least "Scarecrow & Mrs. King"), but she's at least a good twenty to thirty years away from the basic point.