Preparation on a new retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Red Riding Hood has been underway for some months now, with Twilight's Catherine Hardwicke set to direct a script by Orphan's David Johnson, and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way company producing. Now, according to the LA Times, it's looking as if Amanda Seyfried, fresh from Dear John and Jennifer's Body, is in the running to wear the crimson cowl and take on the big bad wolf.
The Times' story also contains confirmation, if confirmation were needed given the director, that The Girl in the Red Riding Hood is very much aimed at the Twilight market, with executives all over Hollywood scrambling to find the next Edward and Bella, without producing the next Darren Shan. Johnson's script apparently constitutes "a werewolf movie with a teenage love triangle at its centre".
Johnson recently completed a new draft of the script, which has garnered the right kinds of thumbs up as "elevated genre material", whatever that's supposed to mean. It's unlikely that we're looking at a Company of Wolves here, that's for sure (or even a Freeway). But whatever you thought of Jennifer's Body, there's no denying that Amanda Seyfried was every bit as much the star of the show as Megan Fox. For anyone looking to build a new teen franchise, she'd seem to us to be a reliable centre.