Will Smith to adapt French Blockbuster “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” (Welcome to the Sticks)
With Hollywood constantly digging to the bottom of someone else’s barrel, we are going to see the raving success of a french film get remade here on this side of the pond.
Cinematical reports:
Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, and its phenomenal success in its homeland — 20 million tickets represents nearly one-third of the country’s population — has brought Hollywood a-knockin’ for remake rights.Warner Bros. and Will Smith’s Overbook Entertainment have bought the rights, according to both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, with Smith and partner James Lassiter set to produce the remake. The French film is a comedy about a post office clerk reassigned from his cushy Southern France office to a branch in the northern boonies where the locals speak an incomprehensible dialect.
This film is utterly HUGE in France and it fits the fish out of water comedy routine people seem to eat up at the box office, so it makes sense that they would try to remake it here in hopes of getting even a sliver of the success it did in France.
With such diverse accents all across the continental United States, I wonder just where the main character will be from, and where he will end up. Will the Postal worker have to deal with some insane exaggerated southern drawl, some New England slang? Mid western? With Hollywood American as the standard accent of choice to assume all Americans speak, the potential for comedy at the expense of some accent somewhere is ready for the picking.
Perhaps if Will Smith decides to star in it himself, he will be a suburban black man who gets moved to a heavy slang urban center? Would be great to see everyone BUT Will sayin “Hell Naw!”
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
Dragonslayer
Go, Will!
May 20th, 2008
sfsilver
Not sure how remaking a bona fide box office success is scraping the bottom of anyone’s barrel - more like skimming the cream off the top…
I hope it can avoid an urban setting, that just sounds boring to me. Maybe a nice thick Maine accent, or a Louisianan/Creole patois.
May 20th, 2008
Krazie835
Films that Smith is apart of usually end up watered down from the original product. I liked I, Robot, and I am Legend, but they felt like a watered down product.
May 20th, 2008
anderton
Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis is a good movie but its phenomenal success is just incredible. Now the big question right now in France is : is it gonna be bigger than Titanic?
May 20th, 2008
Rodney
@SF Silver
I said “digging to the bottom of someone else’s barrel” as to imply our barrel has been dug and now we are headed into someone else’s barrels with the intention of getting to its bottom.
May 20th, 2008
Claude
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I’ve seen the original french movie, and here are my thoughts:
-a) regardless of the amazing box office numbers, this movie is a small, charming, local movie, with a simplistic storyline and characters who are VERY one-dimensional. It is hard to fathom why exactly this feel-good little thing has had such a huge impact, but it has more to do with the current depressed economy and equally depressed state of mind of France than anything else: it is a case of a movie full of good intentions and nice people striking a chord at the right moment.
b) bearing a) in mind, I cannot imagine an american version being any good; a lot of the humor in the movie is based on the confrontation between 2 cultures (north and south of France) and also a lot on language differences and mentalities between the two communities. I think that if you tried to translate that in the US with, for instance, a northern city guy being stuck in the south, it would have to struggle with the burden of political correctness so widespread in Hollywood movies.
Quite frankly, I don’t see this working at all… especially with Will Smith involved.
May 21st, 2008
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