Upcoming Films: Zooey Deschanel News

Obsessed? Me? What are you talking about?

For all you out there obsessed with Zooey Deschanel (you are out there, right? It’s not just me, right? You guys are obsessed too? No? Whatever.) here are the latest news slash rumors about her upcoming projects.

How could this go wrong?

Firstly, and most concretely, she’s set to appear in upcoming film My Idiot Brother as one of the three sisters of Paul Rudd’s “idiot brother” character. Although I’m mostly a Paul Rudd skeptic, her fellow sisters, played by Emily Mortimer and Elizabeth Banks, seem at least passable, and despite the title the movie looks to be quite different from his more uncouth movies (I Love You, Man, Knocked Up, etc.). Each of the sisters lets Rudd’s character stay with them for a period of time, engendering much family bonding as the (presumably) endearing loser younger brother helps them recognize their problems, such as workaholism or, in Zooey’s case, coldness and lack of intimacy. This aloofness is damaging Zooey’s character’s relationship with her girlfriend (yes, you read that right), and it’s pretty clear that a movie involving Zooey Deschanel as a bisexual can hardly fail to be awesome. Hopefully this movie will stay away from the more raunchy jokes, and stick to entertaining comedy, but I will confess to some fear about this movie’s quality. We’ll have to wait and see.

And when she says "kind of dead". . .

On a slightly older note, Zooey has been set to play Janis Joplin in an upcoming biopic entitled The Gospel According to Janis based on the famous singer since about 2006. She beat out quite a few famous actresses for the role, including Scarlett Johansson, Lindsey Lohan, and even P!nk. Zooey spent time taking voice classes to improve her already excellent voice in order to do justice to the 1960s singer, so one can assume the songs would be top-notch. Plus Zooey Deschanel as a 1960s blues slash rock singer would be simply amazing. However, this project has been delayed repeatedly, Zooey herself even calling it “kind of dead.” Those who just want to see a Janis Joplin movie need not despair; Amy Adams has recently been confirmed as starring in an entirely different Joplin film, by director Fernando Meirelles, which might be starting to film sometime late this year . . . maybe. The producer of Gospel, Peter Newman, already has most of the most important rights, to songs and such, that a successful film would need, but has been stuck for a while. Supposedly he’s out to get a really excellent director, to replace Penelope Sheeris, who was set to direct, but it’s unclear whether they’ll manage to get their act together in time for the projected release date of 2012. As a Zooey fan, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this manages to finally get finished, because it would surely be ridiculously excellent.

I can see some resemblance . . .

Zooey also may or may not be starring in Enchantress of Numbers, a period drama based on the life of Ada Lovelace, who, as girl geeks and feminists everywhere know, is accredited as being officially the first computer programmer everywhere, despite the fact that she was a woman living in the early 1800s and the daughter of renowned womanizer and slightly psychotic poet Lord Byron. Sure, it’s a period piece about math and feminism (not sure about the last one, but it seems like it’ll be hard to ignore), but just watching Zooey run around in the 1800s programming computers (sort of) and fighting with her father Lord freaking Byron would be totally wicked, no matter what the actual plot was. The title is based on a poem written about Lovelace by Charles Babbage (hee hee . . . Babbage), who invented the machine that Lovelace’s history-making program was written for, and was a friend of hers. Also, Zooey playing someone called the “Enchantress of Numbers” sounds pretty excellent to me. There’s been some confusion about the truth of the rumor that Zooey will indeed be starring in this, but apparently Production Weekly, among a large number of other credited sources have reported on it fairly unambiguously, so I’m going to assume it’s true, mostly because I just really want to see this movie. It isn't filming yet, as far as I know, and no particular date is set for the release, so if you’re as pumped about this as I am (which you aren’t, but whatever) then stay tuned for further news.

Death and Glory,

Joseph