Here’s yet another remake because Hollywood can’t ever come up with new ideas.
As reported by The InSneider, later paralleled by Variety, there’s a “Baby Boom” remake in the works at Amazon/MGM. The streamer has set its in-house director — because what else is he at this point — Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”) to helm the project.
The original was a likeable comedy vehicle for the late Diane Keaton, who starred as a Type-A retail-food exec whose life goes sideways when an abandoned baby lands in her lap. What follows is a string of increasingly bizarre, sometimes head-scratching decisions that push her out of the corporate life and into something resembling actual purpose.
The project is being described as a “reimagining.” Keaton’s original “Baby Boom” was directed by Charles Shyer, who co-wrote the script with his former partner and producer Nancy Meyers.
I’ll admit, I don’t find “Baby Boom” to be that good of a movie — it’s fairly trite, sentimental, and only semi-saved by Keaton’s charm. Whenever the film gets mentioned, I usually connect it to one of my all-time favorite Coen brothers anecdotes — and there are plenty — the one where Joel and Ethan, hopelessly stuck while writing “Miller’s Crossing,” decide to clear their heads by catching a screening of “Baby Boom,” and somehow walk out of the theater buzzing, whistling the theme song, and with a fully formed spark to write “Barton Fink.”
As for Showalter, I really wasn’t kidding when I said he was basically an in-house director for Amazon/MGM. Showalter’s last film, “The Idea of You,” starred Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine and became Prime Video’s most successful romantic-comedy debut ever. His upcoming projects include the Christmas comedy feature “Oh. What. Fun.” and the Colleen Hoover adaptation “Verity,” both for Amazon/MGM.
Of course, Showalter’s legacy is still firmly tied to his work as the writer and producer of the cult classic “Wet Hot American Summer” and as the writer-director of “The Big Sick,” the most acclaimed film of his career, which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Still no distributor for "Bucking Fastard," "Alpha Gang," "The Last Photograph," "Closing Night," and "The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd." The issue seems to be quality more than a lack of willingness to buy.