I (Melissa) grew up in the era of Annie. For my generation, it was our Wicked. It was the first Broadway show I saw and it helped spark my love of theatre. I carried around that red album to and from school for months, and even played the role of Annie in camp at a time when I could hit that high note.
Annie is one of those shows that plays all the time all over the place. Another revival just closed on Broadway.
Sadly, the 1982 film of the show was just awful. I’m not going to get into how they could massacre those songs and make a cast that includes Albert Finney, Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters look bad. But they did.
Now its time for a full-on Annie reboot. With a script written by Emma Thompson, Will Gluck (Easy A), and Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) and directed by Gluck, this new and clearly improved Annie will head into theatres December 19.
Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) stars alongside Oscar winner Jamie Foxx (Ray) and Cameron Diaz as New York’s pluckiest orphan. Annie’s red hair is transformed into a beautifully wild bob, a wonderful reassurance that we don’t always need to resort to whiteness as the default race. A tale as crowd-pleasing as Annie’s will win you over no matter what.
Wallis is perfectly charming as Annie, but it’s Diaz who’s the real surprise in the trailer: she’s winsomely grouchy in a way I don’t think we’ve ever seen her before. There are unfortunately only a few snippets of the musical’s dance choreography, but the video does offer new renditions of “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” and “Tomorrow” you’ll want to sing for the rest of the day.
Watch the Annie trailer:
