While I still can’t quite get my head around Hollywood making a movie out of 1970s/1980s children’s BBC sitcom Rentaghost, it almost made sense when Russell Brand was up for the lead role. However it appears he’s now left and none other than Ben Stiller has been brought in to replace him, according to Deadline. It’s all a bit surreal really.
The US version is being sold as a ‘Beetlejuice-style afterlife comedy’, which is a bit of a change from the original, which was definitely kid-centric and revolved around a couple, Harold and Ethel Meaker, who run a business called Rentaghost, where they hire out ghouls to the general public. As a result their house is filled with an unusual assortment of the deceased, including medieval court jester Timothy Claypole, Scottish witch Hazel and hayfever prone Nadia Popov (played by Coronation Street’s Sue Nicholls). Oh and a pantomime horse called Dobbin.
In the film version, Stiller would play Fred Mumford, who founds Rentaghost after he dies in a shipping accident. In the original he has to hand the business over to the Meakers when he can’t keep up the rent, but it sounds as if the film might make it a more professional operation, with Mumford in charge of a temp agency that rents out the deceased to the living.
The film will reunite Stiller with Night at the Museum screenwriters Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, who also just been brought onto the project.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser
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