With audiences in the States still singing along to the movie version of Mamma Mia like demented gibbons, Amanda Seyfried is making good on all the Next Big Thing hype that accompanied her turn in the hit musical.
But as many a faded starlet will tell you, it’s the next film that becomes crucial in dictating whether a Next Big Thing will drop the ‘Next’.
And, frankly, choosing a crowd-pleasing tearjerker is a wise move*.
And that’s what Seyfried has done in signing on to star in Lasse Hallstrom’s "Dear John" which, rather than being a remake of the little-known John Sullivan 80s sitcom that starred the late, great Ralph Bates, is a three-hanky affair based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, that professional pricker of tears who penned The Horse Whisperer, The Notebook and Nights In Rodanthe.
Seyfried will star alongside Channing Tatum in the film, which centres around a young woman who meets and falls in love with a soldier while he’s on leave. And, bearing in mind that not only does Hallstrom know his way around heartbreaking material, but ‘Dear John’ is slang for a letter written by a woman to her husband/boyfriend informing him that their relationship is over, we can’t help but feel that this one is going to end in a flood of the salty stuff.
Jamie Linden wrote the script for the movie, which will begin shooting in South Carolina this October, with Relativity Media stumping up the cash. Seyfried will start filming once she wraps her role on the current season of the HBO show, Big Love.
Oh, and in case you thought we had forgotten, Seyfried will actually next be seen in Diablo Cody’s dark comic thriller, Jennifer’s Body, which was filmed before Mamma Mia was released. But we’re pretty sure that there won’t be much crossover between her Mamma Mia audience and that film.