That rain in Spain will again be staying mainly on the plain. Although a perfectly good film version of the musical My Fair Lady has existed since 1964, the Hollywood remake machine will stick their claws into it and shake out another version. This time with Keira Knightley in the lead.
Variety reports that Knightley will play Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who Henry Higgins bets he can turn into high society lady. The excuse for this version is that it will be shot on location (rather than soundstages) and will spend more time on Eliza’s emotional development. That’s what the 1964 version was missing! Probably why it won only eight Oscars and not the bajillion this new version will be showered with. The bajillion is a rough estimate, of course.
The new material will be draw additional material from George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, that wasn’t originally used by Alan Jay Lerner when he adapted Shaw’s play into a musical in 1956. Overall, the goal is to make it so, so much better. As Columbia president (the studio, not the country) Doug Belgrad notes, “this update will preserve the magic of the musical while fleshing out the characters and bringing 1912 London to life in an authentic and exciting way." I’m not exactly salivating about this remake, but seeing the phrase “fleshing out” in terms of a Knightley movie is encouraging.
