Elizabeth Banks has come a long way since playing Daily Bugle secretary Betty Brant in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, and stealing the show as the first-name-only “Beth” in The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. Aside from her key role in The Hunger Games series, she hit a career height this past summer when she became the highest-grossing first-time director ever — her movie Pitch Perfect 2 opened to $70 million dollars, on its way to over $183 million at the domestic box office.
Now Sony is courting Banks to reboot their TV series turned movie franchise Charlie’s Angels once again, after the last attempt at a long-running movie franchise stalled out with 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, a critically panned commercial disappointment. Director McG directed the first Charlie’s Angels movie, a campy send up of the original 1970s television show, starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu as three female private investigators. The movie did fairly well, making $125 million domestically and even more overseas, but audiences didn’t flock back for the second installment. Now, Sony is looking to try again, and Elizabeth Banks seems to be their number one choice to helm the movie at the moment.
If Banks takes the job for a Charlie’s Angels reboot, it would be a coup for Sony, because with just one film under her belt as director, she has proven she can take an almost all-female ensemble and not only make them funny, but write them as real people and not just “hot chicks who kick ass,” which is what the other Charlie’s Angels movies pretty much were. (Although, don’t tell anyone…I still kind of like the first one.)
She could also approach it as a serious action drama, because there’s nothing in writing that says the story of three capable female detectives has to be a silly farce. The original Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith TV show certainly wasn’t perceived that way in its day.
Banks would produce the new Charlie’s Angels with her husband and producing partner Max Handelman. No start date has been given, but Banks has another film she’s committed to first — the YA novel adaptation of The Red Queen, as well as a possible Pitch Perfect 3 for Universal.
Are you excited for a possible new installment of Charlie’s Angels? Let us know in the comments below!
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IMAGE: blogs.indiwire.com
Featured image courtesy of DeviantArt // artist: Silvercatclaws
