Tim Burton is reportedly in talks to bring movie audiences an absolutely massive volume of Margot Robbie, as the Beetlejuice director is working on a deal with Robbie to co-produce, and potentially star in, his planned remake of sci-fi classic Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman.
Burton’s interest in the project popped up last year, including news that Gone Girl‘s Gillian Flynn had worked on a script for the film. Flynn has since departed the project, but the basic plan is still, presumably, the same: Update the 1958 original, in which a regular woman gets turned all big by aliens, for modern audiences. (Christopher Guest and Daryl Hannah did something similar in 1993, jettisoning the various misogynistic overtones of the original film for a remake that was decidedly more empowerment-flavored.) Per Variety, Robbie’s involvement in the project—which would come along with her partners in her LuckyChap production company, which also produced films like Saltburn and Barbie—is at least partially contingent on what final shape the story will take.
Both Robbie and Burton are riding high at the moment, with the former still bearing the aura of box office invincibility imparted by Barbie. (She’s currently starring in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation.) Burton, as always, is a bit more of a wild card, but his Beetlejuice sequel did make decent money, and he’s continued to make Netflix happy with his work on Wednesday. (And to editorialize a bit, this does seem like the kind of thing Robbie could knock out of the park; she has a knack for both physical comedy and pathos that would help to make a concept as silly as Fifty Foot Woman actually work. The question mark is going to be Burton, whose willingness to let his various interests drag him past the point of discipline can both empower and render deeply annoying the resulting work.)
