I'm still fairly sure this is an elaborate April Fool's joke

Credit: Karon Liu

I never trust a trending topic on Twitter, particularly when the first day of April is just a few days away. Indeed, on this very occasion when I was browsing the micro-blogging site, a topic was trending that claimed Jackie Chan was dead. He wasn't.

Just underneath this falsification rested Jennifer Garner's name. Apparently she had been cast as Agatha Christie's pensionable sleuth Miss Marple in a Disney reboot of the series. Pull the other one, I thought.

But here I am, two days later, blogging about this very topic because the story seems to have been picked up by every news agency going and we are facing the very real possibility of a 38-year old American playing Miss Marple. If this is actually an April Fool's joke, it's right up there with the BBC's spaghetti crops.

As someone who has never claimed to be a fan of Miss Marple or even Agatha Christie, I am not one of those people who is at the point of rioting over this news. Any Hollywood re-imagining of something so quintessentially quaint and British was never going to be a good idea. Even a sensible casting decision, Judi Dench for instance, would not convince me that this was going to be a great film. I'm more concerned with what this says about the way Hollywood is interpreting its audience.

The simple truth is that a film centred on an elderly spinster will not shift tickets, no matter how good it is. There have been plenty of successful films featuring older characters, yes, but they have relied on word of mouth and attracting a certain type of cinema goer to be successful. But the industry only really wants the attention of one demographic: the 18-30 year old.

When it comes to mining the classics for their rich reserves of characters and plot, we've seen producers stray from the original many times before. More often than not, this is to bring them "up to date" and make them palatable for a modern audience. Hence, Sherlock Holmes becomes a younger, all-action hero and Othello takes place at an American high school.

Some of these re-imaginings work better than others, but when they do work it is because they have stayed true to the heart and soul of the original piece of literature and framed it in a way that the 18-30 audience can relate to. Think 10 Things I Hate About You putting a modern twist on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. When it doesn't work, the point of the story is missed completely and a character is simply mined to make the film more marketable. I know a lot of people enjoyed Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes but the BBC's Sherlock proved you can bring the character up to date without completely changing him.


Sadly, Miss Marple is in the latter category. A completely original detective story starring Jennifer Garner just wouldn't sell, but by attaching the name of a famous literary character, regardless of how unrecognisable they are from the original, you might make some money.

Perhaps we could remake the Famous Five as a group of sexy college students who solve mysteries with their sassy talking dog, Timmy (not to be confused with Scooby Doo). Justin Bieber could star as Oliver Twist, an orphaned street urchin who becomes an international music sensation.

As someone who is in the 18-30 demographic, I like to think that Hollywood woefully underestimates us. That, if they treated us like adults and gave us some straight-up, faithful adaptations we'd flock to see it. That is what my heart says.

My head says we're getting what we deserve.

Riddick is Returning (and it's a good thing)

It's been no secret that writer/director David Twohy and star Vin Diesel have been trying to get a new Riddick project off the ground for a while but Variety has recently confirmed a new film is in the works, provisionally given the simple title of 'Riddick.' For Vin Diesel this marks another franchise return after he came running back to the 'xXx' and 'The Fast and the Furious' movies, presumably with his tail between his legs. So is this new Riddick movie a sign of desperation or an attempt to reignite Diesel's best work?

Pitch Black is the film that made Diesel a star. Ten years later it remains his best film and while he may not have quite lived up to his billing as the next big action hero in that time he can still carry a film if he is given the right role. Unfortunately, Diesel has proven to have a fairly limited range, explaining his return to franchises he had previously left. However, in Riddick it was clear that Diesel had found his perfect role. Complex, mysterious and with an intriguing and unexplained past, it was a character that could outgrow his ambitious but fairly humble beginnings in Pitch Black. Given the right treatment, Diesel's Riddick could have become a profitable, and maybe even iconic, character.

Which brings us to The Chronicles of Riddick. It wasn't a classic. In fact it was a gigantic mess but it was nowhere near as bad as critics, and the money it made, suggested. It suffered from the budget and expectations placed upon it; whereas Pitch Black had been a modestly budgeted sleeper hit, Chronicles was an epic behemoth; filled with scientifically questionable worlds, evil alien armies, and Judi Dench. The modern need for blockbusters to create a mythology and expanded universe saw Riddick hopping from planet to planet, a baffling Macbeth-inspired sub-plot and numerous new characters and races. Twohy's expanded vision was certainly intriguing and there were quite a few entertaining and interesting set pieces but in the end things didn't add up and the lack of a decent plot, and, most importantly, good character development effectively seemed to kill the franchise before it had even got going.

But with the news of a new film comes a new way of thinking; a good sci-fi film doesn't necessarily have to be a massively budgeted epic. A new film will be considerably cheaper than Chronicles and through this, like in Pitch Black, there should be more focus on character and suspense than size and spectacle. The character of Riddick grabbed our attention but Chronicles did nothing to build on this and paranoid horror was swapped for action set pieces. Of course, there is no guarantee that a new film won't end up a mess like Chronicles but with less resources and a bit more focus, the Riddick franchise could be back on track.