My Week With Marilyn managed to snag Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh well-deserved Oscar nominations, but it was otherwise kind of a disappointing whiff of a movie, fluffy and shallow when it could have been a lot more. But it was also the debut feature for Simon Curtis, and you've gotta give some credit to a guy who directs actors to two Oscar nominations in his first time out of the gate. Now Curtis is moving on to a new project that may be better suited to his glossy directing style, a "romantic anthology set in the online dating world."
According to Variety, Curtis has closed the deal to direct Click to Connect at Fox 2000, with a script from He's Just Not That Into You screenwriter Liz Tuccillo. In the style of that movie inexplicably adapted from a self-help book, Click to Connect will follow a wide range of characters with a vaguely connected goal-- in this case, trying to date online. You can expect a mix of big names and random up-and-comers, and presumably one Robert de Niro in New Year's Eve-style appearance from a veteran actor attempting to bring some class to the affair.
Actually, Curtis may be able to bring the class himself-- he's got that Oscar cred, after all, and for all its faults My Week With Marilyn certainly was better than He's Just Not That Into You. Variety says Curtis wanted to take the job to show off his range as a director, but it sounds like his talents fit much better into the frothy rom-com world-- without dealing with dark issues like Marilyn Monroe's depression or the general soul-sucking of Hollywood, he might be able to get away a little better with that high-toned romantic sheen.
