Elizabeth Banks is a bit of a favorite of us here at The Playlist. While her material has never quite matched her talents, she’s consistently excellent whether single-handedly rescuing the recent series of “30 Rock” from the doldrums, proving one of the highlights of Oliver Stone’s misjudged “W,” or making us wish Peter Parker would sack it in with MJ and take off with his boss’s receptionist in the “Spider-Man” trilogy, news of her joining a new project is almost always cause for celebration.
We say almost always, because Variety brings news that she’s teaming up with producers Adam Shankman and (even worse) McG on a new romantic comedy for Disney called “Tink.” The plot revolves around Tinkerbell from J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” (who’s also the center of a successful series of straight-to-video animations from the studio) and her “mischievous nature.” Banks’ frequent collaborator, actress/writer Elizabeth Wright Shapiro (who’s written a script called “Keiko” that Banks is set to direct), will pen the script, and Banks will also produce through her Brownstone Productions banner (who were previously behind last year’s robo-snooze “Surrogates.”)
We can obviously see why Disney have picked this one up; it seems to take major elements from most of their biggest hits of the last few years, from “Enchanted” to “Alice in Wonderland,” and seems to fit in with their revamping the likes of “Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella.” But, despite Banks’ graduation to a leading role, and the presence of the talented Shapiro, the premise, and the involvement of McG and Shankman make it sound like something we’d cross a sea of broken glass to avoid. We hope to be proven wrong. On the other hand, it does mean that our Peter-Pan-is-a-spy spec script “Tinkerbell, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is that much closer to selling…
