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My Fair Lady Remake Finally Lands a Director in John Madden

by Ethan Anderton
December 1, 2009

This 1956 Broadway musical has already been given the big screen treatment before as a 1964 Academy Award nominated adaptation starring Audrey Hepburn. However, another remake of the classic My Fair Lady has been in the works for some time now with names like Danny Boyle and Baz Luhrmann attached to direct at various points in development. Now it looks like the Columbia Pictures project has found a director as Variety reports that Shakespeare in Love director John Madden will helm the project and search for his leading lady and gentleman in the new year after completing production on the The Debt with Helen Mirren.

Madden's search for a lead actor and actress just might mean that the previously interested Keira Knightley may have gone out the window with also once attached director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice). So now it's anybody's guess just who will fill the shoes of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins so that she can pass as a lady. Higgins takes credit for Eliza's success, but she realizes that she can now be independent and does not need him. This new adaptation will draw more from Alan Jay Lerner's book and lyrics as well as George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion than on the 1964 version.

Having enjoyed the original film, I'm not entirely sure that this is a remake that needs to get made, but it could turn out to be a fun musical. I'd like to see an actress with some comedic and musical talent like Amy Adams take on Eliza Doolittle and maybe a Hugh Jackman type step into the role of Henry Higgins. There's some potential here, but I'll wait for some casting news before I make a serious decision on it. You as well?

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