One good thing about having two pre-teen daughters is that I’m completely up-to-speed on all “Eloise” related news. If you’ve never heard of Eloise, she is the star of a series of illustrated children’s books from the 1950’s by Kay Thompson and illustrator Hilary Knight. Eloise lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York with her nanny, Nanny (that’s how it typically works in children’s books). Her mother is off traveling around the world and her father is either dead or has been kicked to the curb. While Eloise is sometimes described as precocious or ebullent, she’s really just a snotty brat.
But snotty brat sells, so in addition to the five books written by Thompson, there have been two Disney TV movies starring Julie Andrews as Nanny and some kid as Eloise which were pretty popular (and not half-bad.) Now, Variety says that HandMade Films is making a big-screen version of Eloise in Paris. The film is scheduled to start filming next February and be released in late 2008.
Charles Shyer has been tapped to produce and co-write this flick. He has been hit and miss since winning an Oscar for writing Private Benjamin in 1980. Still, this is easy going kid’s comedy with a built in audience. Lots of parents will want to drag their poor kids to see this no matter how much it sucks. They remember the books themselves and grandmothers are still buying copies for their unsuspecting granddaughters (as my bookshelf clearly notes).
