Saturday, February 09, 2013

A New New Annie Found?

No Willow Smith, no problem: The Annie show will go on.

Now that the “Whip My Hair” singer has, well...whipped her back out of the project, a starring role in the musical remake has opened up, and the powers that be are looking at Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild breakout Quvenzhané Wallis to fill it.

The young actress is reportedly in consideration to the lead the project for director Will Gluck (Easy A). Which – somebody has to say it – truly will be her acting test in the eyes of a mass audience.

I mean, Wallis is incredible in the little-seen indie, alright, but that film has this naturalistic thing going. She was 6, if memory serves, when she shot it, and I imagine her director, Oscar nominee Benh Zeitlin, had his work cut out for him or not, depending on how you look at it, to get his actress to deliver such a powerful performance. I often hear actors say kids at that age are so pure and raw, such blunt instruments, they can’t help but shine.

So I wonder now if Wallis, slightly older at 9 and very much a winning personality (just Google her interviews), would thrive in a more structured Hollywood-system set (although I see she has a part in Steve McQueens next awards bait, Twelve Years a Slave, opposite Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt...)...with a quote-unquote proper script...in a musical part, no less.

Just food for thought. I’d hate to see that girl thrown to the wolves.

Photo: Standardar.co.uk.

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