CBS Films and Columbia Pictures are partnering on a new My Fair Lady movie based on the stage play by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, which was inspired by George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. In the early 60s George Cukor directed an energetic film version of Lerner and Loewe's musical. Cukor's beloved film featured Audrey Hepburn as a poor flower girl and Rex Harrison as a high and mighty phonetics professor who tries to mold her into an upper class lady. Keira Knightley, no stranger to period pieces, is said to be circling the role Hepburn made famous. Cukor's My Fair Lady was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four.
According to a press release issued by Columbia Pictures, this new My Fair Lady movie will be set in 1912, like the Broadway play, and will include the original songs. In addition, My Fair Lady will be shot on location in Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Tottenham Court Road, Wimpole Street, and Ascot racecourse. Duncan Kenworthy and Cameron Mackintosh are attached to produce.
Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, stated, "My Fair Lady is not just the quintessential stage musical and classic film, but a fantastic story. We're thrilled to have the opportunity to bring it to the screen once again. There is no one alive who knows this material better than Cameron Mackintosh; he has staged two revivals of My Fair Lady, the first in 1979 directed by Alan Jay Lerner himself, and the second the award-winning adaptation that's now touring the United States. He and Duncan Kenworthy have already set out on the long journey of bringing a new version to the screen and we feel very lucky to be a part of it. This update will preserve the magic of the musical while fleshing out the characters and bringing 1912 London to life in an authentic and exciting way for contemporary audiences."
Mackintosh was quoted as saying, "My Fair Lady's extraordinary tale of a man turning a flower girl into a lady, and then falling for her, combines one of the most powerful narratives in world literature with some of the wittiest and most winning songs ever written for the stage. People everywhere will fall in love again with Lerner and Loewe's miraculous songs set in a big, gorgeous film with contemporary stars, a more realistically achieved vision of Edwardian London, and a touch more Pygmalion at the heart of this powerfully emotional story of a girl's transformation. The classic story of a flower girl transformed into an instant sensation couldn't be more timely in a contemporary world obsessed with overnight celebrity."
Source: Columbia Pictures
