Diablo Cody Says ‘Evil Dead’ Remake Will Be “Unbelievably Violent,” Sees ‘Sweet Valley High’ As ‘American Graffiti’ For The ’80s
We haven’t seen a feature from screenwriter fromDiablo Codysince 2009’s tepidly receivedJennifer’s Body, but next month’sYoung Adultkicks off a series of interesting projects Cody’s got on her slate. In a pair of recent interviews, Cody touched upon two very different ones: theEvil Deadremake from writer-directorFede Alvarez(which has the blessing of the original’s directorSam Raimiand star/exec producerBruce Campbell, before you get too up in arms), and thatSweet Valley Highmovieannounceda couple of years back. Read her comments after the jump.
As a fan of Raimi’s original films, Cody says, she was “so excited” to work on Alvarez’s remake. At the same time, however, “I was nervous to take the job because I thought ‘Ugh, I’m gonna get shit for this.’ People are not gonna like this, because all people know of me isJunoand they think I’m gonna polluteEvil Deadwith wacky dialogue and cute stuff and folk music.” But “I understand what this is,” she asserts. “I’m interested in storytelling here and making it scary and good and true to the original.”
While we’ll have to wait and see howEvil Deadactually turns out, I’m willing to give Cody the benefit of the doubt. There’s no reason to believe Cody canonlydo cutesy dialogue, just as there’s no reason to assume a primarily dramatic actor could never do comedy or vice versa. I’d think that someone intelligent enough to write the genuinely sweet, smartJunowould also be sharp enough to realize that “honest to blog” and hamburger telephones have no place in anEvil Deadmovie.
Cody was less on the defensive in her other interview, this one withThe Playlist. Cody spoke with the site about the YA adaptationSweet Valley High, which in all respects sounds more like what we’ve come to expect from her.
“I want it to be wonderfully nostalgic,” she told the site. “I want it to be to the ’80s whatAmerican Graffitiwas to the [early] ’60s. I want it to be looking back on a really cool time and enjoying yourself and I want it to be glamorous and colorful and bubblegum and a feast for the senses. That’s my plan.”
Though Cody didn’t offer a timetable for the project, she affirmed that it was definitely happening. “That is moving forward,” she said. “It’s closer to reality than ever but I can’t freely talk about it.”
As someone who loved Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High books in her adolescent years andJunoin her twentysomething days, I can’t think of anyone better suited to bring Pascal’s stories to life than Cody. Cody definitely gets teenagers, and her signature cutesy dialogue would fit pretty well into the idealized universe of Sweet Valley. If anything, I’d expect Cody’s take to be an improvement over the original Sweet Valley, which I’ve come to realize as an adult was rarely well written and mostly pretty silly.
