Coming off her success on Beasts of the Southern Wild, Quvenzhané Wallis took a small part in this year’s Best Picture winner, 12 Years a Slave, but her follow-up leading role looks to be far removed in quality from those two aforementioned titles. With Jay-Z on board as producer on an Annie remake, I held out glimmer of hope that he could inject his stamp on the product, but with this first trailer, that’s pretty much been flushed down the drain.
From this far-too-long preview, everything about this adaptation of the Broadway musical seems like an ill-fitted, bland remake has been churned out by the studio. While director Will Gluck has proven he can create a crowdpleaser, hopefully Sony is simply going for the lowest common denominator with this early marketing. Check out the trailer and poster below for the film also starring Jamie Foxx, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, David Zayas, and Cameron Diaz.
Academy Award® nominee Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) stars as Annie, a young, happy foster kid who’s also tough enough to make her way on the streets of New York in 2014. Originally left by her parents as a baby with the promise that they’d be back for her someday, it’s been a hard knock life ever since with her mean foster mom Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz). But everything’s about to change when the hard-nosed tycoon and New York mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) – advised by his brilliant VP, Grace (Rose Byrne) and his shrewd and scheming campaign advisor, Guy (Bobby Cannavale) – makes a thinly-veiled campaign move and takes her in. Stacks believes he’s her guardian angel, but Annie’s self-assured nature and bright, sun-will-come-out-tomorrow outlook on life just might mean it’s the other way around.
Annie opens on Christmas Day.