You may remember that Keira was in serious talks to star in a film remake of My Fair Lady before it fell through, and that the remake is still in development. This is twice now that Keira has wanted to recreate an Audrey Hepburn film role, and her first time actually doing it. Any thoughts on her choices in this regard?

The Daily Mail has the story, though really, I think the title tells you more than you want to know: ‘Audrey Hepburn was twee, mumsy and really couldn’t act’: Emma Thompson’s scathing appraisal of My Fair Lady star. The link will take you to the article, and that’s all I’m going to say on this for now. I did actually write quite a fact-filled rant schooling Emma Thompson on how wrong she is on all this, but I’ll spare you – unless you’d really like me to share.

Keira Knightley is not playing Eliza Doolittle. I know some of you will breathe a huge sigh of relief over this (myself included). Perhaps at one time she was attached to the project, or at least hoped she would be cast, as director Joe Wright, who has worked with Keira on both Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, was once on board to direct Lady. But he is off now, and so is any thought of Keira as Eliza.

Carey Mulligan is not playing Eliza either. Though she is linked to the project on IMDb, and screenwriter Emma Thompson herself said that Carey had been definitively cast via The Guardian, poor befuddled Carey herself shoots down that pesky rumor in an interview on Collider.

Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t playing Henry Higgins, and neither is Hugh Grant. Just to clarify.

In short, no one has signed on yet, as far as anyone can tell, and the only thing that is for certain is that there is a screenplay, and Emma Thompson wrote it. Beyond that, just gossip. Also, remember that this remake has been in the works for ages now, much like the infamous Why Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn?

While I still haven’t heard anything set in stone and announced officially, it seems to be a widely assumed fact that Keira Knightley is signed to play Eliza Doolittle in the upcoming film remake of My Fair Lady. Information is still scarce, and no other cast has been announced (though wildly speculated on), but now IMDb has a development page up for the film, with a release date of 2010. You have to have a Pro account to see any details, and I don’t really feel like paying to get one piece of information, but Keira’s page also has one developing project on it, which I’m betting is MFL.

While doing some wandering on the Internet, I found that Wikipedia has collected some more information. Supposedly, actress Emma Thompson will be writing the screenplay (longhand, with a fountain pen), and it’s to be a somewhat updated version of the classic film and play. Even more startling is the persistent rumor that Brad Pitt and George Clooney were looking to produce the movie together, as they have worked together many times before, but had a huge falling out over the fact that they both wanted the plum Henry Higgins role. What’s more, some are saying that Brad wanted partner Angelina Jolie as Eliza! I’d say to take all these rumors with a grain of salt or two, but it still makes for interesting news, no?

Hopefully we’ll get some more concrete news before too long, and can then focus on the long wait ’til production photos, trailers, and the film itself. Has this new information made anyone feel better — or worse — about the remake? Also, what are your views on redoing this role so famously? Audrey herself wasn’t immune to criticism when she was cast, despite the fact that Warner Bros. thought Julie Andrews was too unknown to star in the last great film musical, so how will Keira and her career hold up after trying to fill the shoes of two such memorable women and their versions of Eliza Doolittle?

Oh, we can hear some of you crying foul. Yes, Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly in the 1961 Blake Edwards original is one of the most iconic performances in film history. Yes, the movie is beloved and acclaimed and blah, blah, blah. It’s also, honestly, not that great, and it bears very little resemblance to Truman Capote’s 1958 book, a far more complex and melancholy tale for which Hollywood just wasn’t ready. Sure, movies and books are different media and shouldn’t be compared with each other, but in this case we’ll make an exception. Why not take a stab at a more faithful adaptation with a less gazelle-like Holly (how about Elisha Cuthbert or Lauren Ambrose?), a less-straight Fred (played by Topher Grace? Owen Wilson?), no happy ending and, most of all, no Mr. Yunioshi. Hey, Sofia Coppola: Whattya think? Good follow-up to “Marie Antoinette”?

[Links to the actors mentioned in the article added by me.] For those of you who have read Capote’s original novella, don’t you think there’s a reason why the film wasn’t a faithful adaptation? I think it was lightened for the same reasons film adaptations of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame will never be true to their classic novel counterparts, and that is because they are too dark for the average movie audience. Perhaps today’s audience is more sophisticated than the audiences of the 50s and early 60s, if only because we can handle a lot more sex and violence. But deep down, everyone still wants to see a happy ending. Films are screened and remade because test audiences still demand a happily ever after, even in our cynical age. Besides, practically everyone knows by now that Breakfast at Tiffany’s isn’t very true to the book, and I’ve met very few people, if any, that actually prefer the book over the film. Most of all, no actress could ever recreate Holly Golightly after Audrey Hepburn has donned her little black dress, and it has actually been detrimental to the few actresses who have dared to remold Audrey’s classic characters (see Julia Ormond and Jennifer Love Hewitt). My opinions aside, please read the article for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

In other, better news, it’s fashion week in India! More importantly, designer Shantanu Goenka has designed his fall 2007 collection on My Fair Lady, both the Audrey film and George Bernard Shaw’s original Pygmalion play that My Fair Lady is based on. The soundtrack to the film played throughout the showing of the collection, and the models themselves went through a flowergirl-to-lady transformation. You can read more about Shantanu’s show here.

Lastly, the shy translator who was good enough to transcribe the French interview clip from Sunday has come forward! So if you haven’t seen the translation yet, click the link directly above to see the clip, click on the comments link to read the transcript, and leave a little thank you for Manuel Martinez for being so good as to copy out the entire conversation and then translate it for us. That’s no mean feat! Merci beaucoup pour votre aide!

Not only is there a revamped W&P for the busy reader, but there is also a new miniseries coming at the end of the year. So you can read the cut-down book at the beginning of the year, then watch the cut-down version of it on TV in the second half of the year. The only release date planned so far is April 30 for Italy. I’m not even sure if it will be released anywhere else at this time, but I will keep an eye on it. Following in Audrey Hepburn’s footsteps as Natasha Rostov will be Clémence Poésy, a French actress who was recently in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (picture to the right).

Lastly, if you were interested in skimming over War and Peace to see if it would make an interesting read, you can actually read the entire book online here. Though I’m sure the table of contents alone will scare off most readers!