She’s going to star in a film that sounds suspiciously like a Shakespearean version of Lost In Austen. And Misfits’ Robert Sheehan is in it too
The film is called Romeo and Brittney, and, according to Deadline , Gillan will play, “a spiky New Jersey high school teenager who… wakes up in mythical 13th century Verona with all the people she knows from her high school life playing characters in the [Romeo and Juliet]. And she wants to get out because she knows how the play ends.”
Anyone else thinking, “That all sounds a bit Lost In Austen ?” That was an excellent ITV show from a couple of years back in which Jemima Rooper found herself transported into the midst of Pride And Prejudice . Now, that would make a great film, too.
Anyway, Romeo And Brittney also stars Gillian Anderson as Gillan’s mother and the Nurse, and Robert Sheehan ( Misfits ) as the school nerd who becomes Romeo.
The $7 million movie is being directed by David Baddiel, who since his Mary Whitehouse days has carved out a career as a novelist. This is his film directing debut but he did write the script for The Infidel .
Producer Arvind Ethan says: “We both 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 and Juliet with vampires and werewolves?”
