Can’t say we saw this one coming – New Line has signed Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal up to star in a remake of classic musical Damn Yankees.
Originally on stage in 1955 (and first turned into a film in 1958), Yankees tell the fateful tale of Joe Boyd, a happily married schlub who is devoted to his favourite baseball team.
Offered a deal by Satan to help the team, he’s magically transformed into expert batter Joe Hardy – but at the cost of (surprise!) his soul.
Boyd can get out of the deal, but only when the team are in the middle of the championship World Series. Oh, and the devil also sends along a sexy lost soul to seduce him and help seal the deal.
Carrey, you might have guessed, will be playing the devil, while Gyllenhaal takes on the everyman role.
Not surprisingly, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron - who brought us the film musical version of Hairspray – are the driving force behind this update. They’ve tried once before to get it up and dancing, but the plan fell apart at Miramax.
Now, with the rights back in their hands and at New Line, they’ve hired writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel to brush up the script into a more modern setting, while maintaining the spirit of the show.
We hope for their sake the musical genre hasn’t vanished back into the ether by the time the movie hoofs it on screen.
[Source: Variety]
A baseball musical? Would you watch? Or does it strike out with you?
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Comments
ashley.russell
Feb 27th 2009, 12:03
the baseball and musical parts dont interest me at all. The fact that Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhal are in a baseball musical, does.
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blade32
Feb 27th 2009, 13:27
i like the sound of this. nice to see carrey trying new ground, not that i would want him to move away from comedy (yes man was ace). hopefully his charecter will get a good amount of time on screen.
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