201101261345.jpgVariety confirms that everyone’s favorite orphan is getting a reboot, courtesy if Will Smith’s production company, with daughter Willow Smith set to star. Smith’s production company is teaming with Jay-Z to form a new movie-making joint venture and ANNIE is on the list.

The remake will be a musical, which is great because all little girls like to sing songs from ANNIE. Jay-Z also likes to sing songs from ANNIE, so the new version will sound something like this:

And yes, she is usually known as a redhead and everyone is going to go bonkers over this but, guess what, we live in a multicultural society now and WIllow Smith is an adorable kid who already has an album in the works.

ANNIE is based on Harold Gray’s classic comic strip, which provided an adventurous mirror of Depression-era America, as the plucky orphan was continually separated from her guardian, the ultra-rich Daddy Warbucks. A previous version of the ANNIE musical was filmed in 1982 by John Huston, with Albert Finnney as Daddy Warbucks and Aileen Quinn as Annie. Quinn acts occasionally, but mostly works as a drama teacher in New Jersey these days.

1 COMMENT

  1. Because the 1982 version was such a hit. At the time, the movie rights for the play set a record (something like $10 million). This was a film directed by John Huston which even his fans ignore because it was so horrible in every way. After he died, the film was pretty much ignored in his obits too, mostly I think because when Daily Variety gave the film a bad review upon its release, John Huston actually wrote a letter to Variety complaining about this, stating that the trade papers shouldn’t give bad reviews to big budget movies or else studios would be reluctant to make big budget movies! Still, any remake would have to be better than the original. Aileen Quinn was inexplicably cast as the lead in the original and she was so awful that the only other film she made afterwards went straight to video. She was such an unattractive young actress that the painted movie posters deliberately made her appear more attractive than she really was. It didn’t work though.

  2. This will be the FOURTH Annie movie.

    Curiously, the first Annie, Mitzi Green, also starred in the movie “Skippy”, based on the Percy Crosby strip, starring Jackie Coogan, who, of course, played Perry White in the Superman films.

  3. How dare they replace a minority! Really? A black Annie? The ginger folk will not stand for this!

    Half kidding aside, can Will Smith stop remaking roles made famous by white actors for his kids and actually made something freaking original! I know he’s far from the only one with remake-itis, but geez. What does that say about roles for black kids? Give us another Pursuit of Happiness or anything original. Quit racebending roles for your kids.

    And really, I’d complain if they didn’t cast an Annie as a red head, not matter her race.

  4. So, does Will Smith’s production company exist entirely to make movies starring his kids? Sweet deal if you can get it, I guess.

  5. Ok….Wat the freak is wrong with will smith trying to make his kids the best at Wat they do? Nothing! It’s not the fact that they’re his kids its just the fact that certain people are made for certain movies. Nd wen has will ever made a mistAke on his choice of actors?? Ugh…just ridiculous