First 'Annie' Trailer Gives A Modern Update To The Classic Musical

The musical Annie has been a mainstay of the theater scene ever since it premiered on Broadway back in 1977, but now the latest version is here to once again take the leap from the stage to the silver screen. The debut trailer for the new movie version of Annie has arrived online courtesy of Yahoo! and you can watch it for yourself above.

Directed by Will Gluck, the director of Easy A and Friends With Benefits, the new take on the classic Broadway musical stars Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) as Annie, a young orphan girl living in a foster home in New York City. While her day to day life is made exceptionally hard by her foster mom Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), her fate changes when she meets Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx), a millionaire tycoon who is in the middle of a race to become the mayor of New York. Following some advice from his campaign manager (Bobby Cannavale), Will agrees to take Annie into his home as a means of bumping his voter numbers. What he doesn't count on, however, is starting to develop feelings for the little girl, and things get even harder when Annie's parents - who always promised to be back for her someday - reenter the picture.

This is the latest adaptation of of the musical by Thomas Meehan, Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse, but it's far from the first. Back in 1982 director John Huston directed a star-studded version of the story himself, starring the likes of Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks and Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan as well as Tim Cury, Bernadette Peters and Ann Reinking. Obviously it was made in a very different time and is a very different version of the source material, but it's still interesting to look at the two movies side-by-side and compare.

In addition to the aforementioned stars, the new version of Annie also stars Rose Byrne as Grace, the VP of Will Stack's company, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, David Zayas and Tracie Thoms. In addition to the new trailer, Sony has also unveiled the debut teaser poster for the film, which you can see below:

Annie Poster

Did this trailer get you really excited for Annie? Are you standing on top of your desk and singing "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" at the top of your lungs in anticipation for the film? Well, I have some bad news. While this trailer is here to give us an early taste of the movie musical , the feature won't actually be in theaters until December 19th. Hope you can hold it together until then.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.