As the project cannot be guided by mere privilege alone, Sony Pictures has hired Easy A and Friends With Benefits director Will Gluck as the man who will bear the brunt of expectations from Will Smith and Jay-Z, as he attempts to realize their unlikely shared vision of a remake of Annie. The film—a concept based on that one time Jay-Z sampled “Hard Knock Life” and the fact that Will Smith has a daughter—will begin shooting in the fall for a 2014 release, though it will now do so without its originally intended star Willow Smith, who has since become too old and overwhelmed by the melancholy of age, a former sapling bent irrevocably back to the ground that spawned it.