Updated: Ok - so it's not just fans of
Agatha Christie's super sleuth that were pissed off at Disney's decision to announce a sexier set of
Miss Marple films to be led by 38 year old American
Jennifer Garner, but also the rights holders too. Chorion, the British company who own the copyright to the works of Agatha Christie,
has told the BBC that no deal with Disney to remake Miss Marple has been closed, and I imagine they are pissed at finding out just what direction The Mouse wants to take the character in. I suspect this adaptation is in deep trouble and it's hard to see Chorion agreeing to what Disney are planning. Agatha Christie's biographer Laura Thompson has already told us that she thinks Christie would be turning in her grave about the casting and reminds us that Christie even disliked
Margaret Rutherford's portrayl of Marple in the late 50's commenting to MGM;
Why dont they just invent a new character? Then they can have their cheap fun and leave me and my creations alone.
How apt that comment is in regards to this new Jennifer Garner/Miss Marple proposal. Original story follows... Just occasionally, even Hollywood manages to so exceed its own demented standards that it makes one wonder whether one is not in fact reading a film announcement so much as enduring a darkly comic surreal dream or, even, a particularly bad experience on ketamine. This morning, our friends at
Deadline provided one of these moments when it announced that it Disney- after lengthy negotiations- had secured the rights to the
Agatha Christie story of geriatric detective
Miss Marple and that glamorous 38 year old actress
Jennifer Garner was to play the part! Yes, the sex symbol, love interest and sometime super-hero has been cast as someone whom John Sullivan (Only Fools and Horses) once described as Mr Kiplings Bit on the Side. Most known to UK audiences through the dramatized ITV series starring the late Joan Hickson, the Miss. Marple stories see the elderly but wily spinster solve rural crimes in between the pursuits traditionally associated with the elderly such as gardening and knitting. Disney, of course, have dispensed entirely with this narrative world and Garners Miss Marple will be a (clearly) much younger, hipper, urban character so different from Christies conception that it is a wonder why they bothered purchasing the rights at all. Of course, the only possible conclusion can be brand recognition- a ghastly phrase, so beloved of marketing people that see no value in the status of a story or character that has stood the test of time other than a means of profiting from something infinitely more populist and vapid. The tragedy, of course, is that Christies vision is now lost to the screen entirely as Disney now own the rights; thus we are deprived of a truly interesting person or setting, and the unique chance to portray something other than the narrow representations of femininity that so overwhelm Hollywood cinema.
Mark Frost (Fantastic Four 1 & 2) will write the screenplay but no director is attached. A wholly stupid idea...
