The good news is that the upcoming adaptation of the great children's book Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day looks like it's still happening and is going to start production in the fall. The bad news is that right now it's a ship without a captain.
The Kids Are All Right director Lisa Cholodenko, who has been attached to the project since May of 2011, has decided that she no longer wants to helm he movie and has left the director's chair empty. It's a surprising move given that she stuck with the movie as it was shopped from Twentieth Century Fox over to Disney. Deadline, which first broke the news of the departure, says that Steve Carell is still attached to the film as Alexander's father and they will continue to use the script written by Cholodenko and Rob Lieber.
For those unfamiliar with the Judith Viorst book, the story centers on the eponymous Alexander, a boy having the worst day of his young life. He gets gum stuck in his hair, his sweater falls in the sink, he trips on his skateboard and fails to get a prize in his cereal - and that's all before he leaves the house in the morning.
This really is an unfortunate development when you consider that this would have been a very different kind of film for Cholodenko and an interesting experiment. Did she leave because she was unhappy with the project's direction at the new studio or did she simply find something else that she wanted to make instead? Considering her script is still in play, does that mean that she will be involved with the project in other capacities? Who would Disney try and get to replace her? Questions, questions, questions...
