Footloose and James McAvoy on HSM vs. Penelope
From an interview with Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producers of Hairspray:
Hollywood.com: Rumor has it that you are remaking your 1984 hit Footloose.
CZ: We were asked by Paramount to do a brand new version with Zac Efron. The question is, I'm not quite sure where we stand on it because I would only be interested in doing it if we could reinvent it as a movie musical. Originally it wasn't a musical. It was a movie that had dancing in it, but it had a soundtrack album. No one actually sang in the movie. So if it could be reinvented completely as a movie musical with Zac Efron that's something that we'd be interested in doing, but only if it was completely rethought. If it turned out to be something that was really just a remake of the movie that I've already made I wouldn't be interested in it because why bother remaking something that was so successful. I wouldn't touch it. I would want the audience to sit there and say, "Oh, I see why he remade that." If they can't say that or if they said, "I don't understand why he remade that," - then I wouldn't want to do it.
HW: Zac's High School Musical franchise has really created a young fan base for movie musicals.
CZ: Everyone keeps on saying, "How come it was so successful." I think it's the simplest thing. I think that it's almost simplistic because the truth of the matter is that nobody made a musical for kids. The moment that someone made a musical for kids they went crazy and they loved it and it just shows you that there's an audience out there.
James McAvoy thinks HSM is too perfect
"James claims his fairy-tale flick [Penelope] has “real dilemmas and real issues and realish people. There’s nothing wrong with High School Musical, but we aren’t all just idealized and perfect.” J.M. obvs doesn’t read up on the tween mags, 'cause every Zac Efron fan out there would sure beg to differ with him on that."
I think it is an interesting point which Zac deftly handles when an interviewer asks him about the same point:
Int.: How true to teenage life is [HSM]?
Zac: It's how we like to show them behaving... you don't necessarily need all that, especially, you know, kids learn about high school no matter what, they're gonna get there eventually, why force it upon them early?
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