Revolution Studios is near a deal with RKO Pictures to acquire remake rights to “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.”
The film will be scripted by Hank Nelken and fasttracked as a directing vehicle for “Daddy Day Care” helmer Steve Carr.
The deal indicates that RKO Pictures is again putting together pictures, and “Blandings” is one of the gems in the library. The original 1948 pic starred Cary Grant and Myrna Loy as a husband and wife who move from a crowded Manhattan apartment to escape the rat race of the big city. The idealistic Blandings finds that moving into a fixer-upper in the idyllic suburbs is a lot more difficult than he imagined.
Heidi Santelli and Ted Hartley will produce, Aaron Ray will be exec producer.
Nine Yards Entertainment CEO Ray was brought on as a consultant to reformulate and restructure RKO Pictures in hopes of utilizing the library of remakes and a wealth of unproduced screenplays by the likes of Orson Welles, Ben Hecht and Herman Mankiewicz. He reps Carr with WMA, and matched the filmmaker to the material.
Nelken will begin writing immediately, and the hope is to make this the next assignment for Carr, who is shooting the Martin Lawrence starrer “Rage Control.”
“I used to watch old movies with my mom. ‘Blandings’ was the one that introduced me to Cary Grant and physical comedy,” Carr said. “The idea of a family moving from an apartment to the house from hell was unofficially remade already in ‘The Money Pit,’ a film that was not my favorite. Our pitch is closer to ‘Parenthood,’ the idea of a close family and the house that comes between it.
