It’s becoming almost a rite of passage in Hollywood that at some point a male actor has to attach himself to a planned remake of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. The most recent incarnation has seen Jim Carrey, Owen Wilson and Mike Myers, Sasha Baron Cohen and others circling to star, while Steven Spielberg, Mark Waters, Chuck Russell, Ron Howard and most recently Gore Verbinski have been attached to direct.
The latest actor to show interest is Ben Stiller, who’s apparently in talks now that a new script has been written by Steve Conrad (Pursuit Of Happyness), which dumps most of what had been planned previously for the remake and goes in an unspecified new direction. However while Verbinski was attached just a couple of months ago, it seems he’s gone, as Deadline reports the project has no director, but Fox is keen to lock one in so they can shoot this autumn.
The remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye film will follow the title character, who lives a small life as a pulp fiction writer, but dreams of grand adventures. These start to come true when he’s handed a book by a mysterious women who says it contains the location of the hidden Dutch crown jewels. This soon lead Mitty into the middle of a confusing conspiracy, where he learns that being a hero is tougher than he imagined.