US remakes of British sitcoms have been a mixed bag. For every award-scooping Office, there's been a shocking Spaced, an ill-advised IT Crowd or a cruddy Coupling that have transplanted the original idea with all the skill of a local butcher conducting an organ surgery. So how will that quartet of secondary school scamps The Inbetweeners fare when they’re transformed into Virgins America, Paramount’s big-screen redo of The Inbetweeners Movie? Director Jim Field Smith is the man charged with making sure it’s the former rather than the latter.
The She’s Out Of My League and Episodes director is the man in charge, according to Deadline’s scoop. The ungainly growing pains of that 2010 rom-com no doubt played into the studio’s thinking, even if Jay Baruchel’s shy twenty-something does eventually wow Alice Eve’s hottie in a way that Will, Simon, Neil and Jay would in no way be able to relate to.
No word on who will be playing the American versions of the hapless quartet, or what they’ll be getting up to on screen, only that they’ll all be treading that very fine line between dorkishness and cool. So far, there's been no news of any involvement from the creators of the original show, Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, and, from the looks of things, this will have nothing to do with MTV's failed American Inbetweeners sitcom that came and went last year (see below).
Snakes On A Plane and **Jack Reacher **producer Don Granger is overseeing the remake.