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.