I don’t know whether to be excited or terrified. A live action movie version of Jack and the Beanstalk is going into production. Sounds like a horrible idea doesn’t it? Fairytales on screen only work when they’re done by Disney and done animated.
The concept may sound like a bad one, but Variety says the cast is led by Christopher Lloyd, Katey Sagal, and Wallace Shawn. Scuse me, but that’s completely awesome. Those are three people who I’ll watch any time, anywhere, in just about anything. Doing voice work in the movie will be Gilbert Godfried, and possibly James Earl Jones who is currently in negotiations to voice the Giant. Unfortunately, also in the cast is Chevy Chase. Chevy, has sucked beyond all reason for nearly twenty years now and shows no sign of improving. Even the combined awesome power of Lloyd, Sagal, and Shawn may not be able to counteract the Chevy curse.
Katey Sagal is set to play Jack’s concerned mother, Wallace Shawn will play pawnbroker who sells the magic beans, and Gilbert Godfried is voicing the golden egg laying goose. Just thinking about the cast already has me laughing. Bound to be less worth a laugh is Chevy as the owner of a labyrinth (aka extraneous plot device to draw out the movie to the proper length necessary for a feature film) Jack has to get through to reach the Giant. Also part of an add-on plot device is Christopher Lloyd, who plays a strict headmaster at Jack’s school.
The movie is described as a “low-budget family feature” being pushed out by a production called Avalon. This is the first of ten fairytale based, on a budget movies they’re planning and it would probably be wise to approach all of them with lowered expectations. Low-budget family fare, even with so many great people in the cast, is often a pretty dicey proposition. Still, with people like Lloyd and Shawn involved it’s impossible not to be interested in the project.
