Once in awhile, news is brought to my attention that’s so frightening, it shakes me to my core. In March, it was announced that Lionsgate would be turning the oh-so-popular how-to book WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOUR EXPECTING into a feature length film. Variety has a little more details on the project, reporting that Cameron Diaz is in talks to play the lead and the studio plans to release the film on, of course, Mother’s Day weekend 2012.
Kirk Jones (NANNY MCPHEE) is on board to direct. Lionsgate hired scribe Heather Hach (FREAKY FRIDAY remake) – who was nine months pregnant at the time – to adapt from her pitch about the relationships of seven couples as they prepare for parenthood. Shauna Cross (WHIP IT!) had penned the final draft in which the focus is now on four interconnected couples, experiencing the thrills and surprises of having a baby. It’s said to be in the same vein as VALENTINE’S DAY.
You see people?! This is the Hell that you’ve wrought! When you vote with your dollars at the box office, you turn crap like VALENTINE’S DAY into a money making (but critical disaster) hit. It then gets cloned a million times. I’m sure this doesn’t apply to any of our fine readers, though. Let me just move my soapbox.
The project will go up against some very stiff competition that weekend. Sacha Baron Cohen’s THE DICTATOR opens that same weekend, as well as Joss Whedon’s THE AVENGERS. Safe to say, I think EXPECTING will have the pants beat off of them.
I swear, you can almost predict what the reviews will read like for this film. Here is a selection to choose from: “The film should have been aborted”, “This film has arrived stillborn”, and last but not least, “The cinematic equivalent of afterbirth.”
What are your thoughts? Am I being too tough? Do you think there’s a market for this?
