After capturing the nation’s attention as Amy Pond in Doctor Who, it was only a matter of time before Karen Gillan’s phone started ringing with leading film roles. And she’s just landed her first big gig, signing on to star in Romeo and Brittney.
Funny bloke David Baddiel is stepping up from having written Omid Djalili@font-face p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } identity crisis comedy The Infidel to scripting and directing the new film, which finds Gillan as a New Jersey high school student sent back in time to a fantastical 13th century Verona, where it just so happens that people from her life are characters from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Gillian Anderson has snatched up the dual role of Gillan’s mother and the Nurse, and Brittney will meet her Romeo in Misfits’ Robert Sheehan. Except that Romeo is more of a nerdy reject than the usual heroic type.
Producer Arvin Ethan David has set the film up with a $7 million budget and a shooting schedule pencilled in for May that will allow Gillan to work on the role after the latest Who series wraps.
“We both love literate teen comedies and we wanted to do our own version,” Baddiel said in a statement. “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?” What indeed? We’re not sure we’d compare Stephenie Meyer to Shakespeare, though we bet some of her fans would…