Sounds as if talk during down-time on the Men in Black III set has been turning to li'l orphans and hard knock lives. Will Smith is apparently keen for Emma Thompson to take on screenplay duties for his Annie rejig.
Annie, as previously reported, is being cooked up by Will Smith and Jay-Z as a star vehicle for Smith's daughter Willow, with Glee and Eat Pray Love director Ryan Murphy behind the camera. The line here is "reimagining", and we'd wondered before whether this wouldn't be the Broadway musical we know, but a new adaptation of the long-running comic strip. Nope. Vulture are saying that the job on offer is to "re-adapt the screenplay for an updated version of the musical."
Thompson of course, is no stranger to screenwriting, having won an Oscar for adapting Sense and Sensibility, and penned the Nanny McPhee films and the as-yet-unmade My Fair Lady remake. Clearly a safe pair of hands then, who'd provide some much needed wit to undercut what could very well turn out a horribly saccharine enterprise.
Thompson is also generally in what she writes, so Smith and Z could very well have just cast their Agatha Hannigan in the process of finding their writer...