Actress Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) has signed to star in Romeo And Brittney, the follow-up movie from comedian David Baddiel (The Infidel). The current Doctor Who companion will play Brittney, a high school student from New Jersey who finds herself in the 13th-century, stuck in the plot of William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet as the female lead.
Gillian Anderson (The X Files) will be playing both Gillan's mother and a nurse in 13th-century Verona, while Robert Sheehan (Misfits) has been cast as a nerdy student and Romeo.
The $7 million movie, summarized as "Shakespeare In Love meets Clueless", starts shooting next May.
Arvind Ethan, producer:
"[David Baddiel and I] love literate teen comedies and we wanted to do our own version. After all, 10 Things I Hate About You was based on The Taming Of The Shrew just as Clueless was based on Jane Austen's Emma and Easy A is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. And what is Twilight if it's not Romeo & Juliet with vampires and werewolves?"This is certainly exciting news, particularly if you love Karen Gillan and Robert Sheehan -- who's particularly charismatic as Nathan in Misfits. The premise doesn't sound like a simple case of time-travel (as a few actors are playing dual roles), more like a reality-bending fantasy similar to Lost In Austen (the ITV miniseries where a modern woman was transported into the novel Pride & Prejudice). Agree?
My only reservation is the involvement of David Baddiel; a decent comedian back in the early-'90s and a talented writer, but his recent movie The Infidel was toothless and a tedious disappointment, with limp direction. Will he fare better with a more imaginative concept and a bigger budget?
