Perhaps no screenwriter has so swiftly risen to success, been awarded the profession’s highest honor of an Academy Award, and been so swiftly lambasted afterward for her work as Diablo Cody. The box office for Jennifer’s Body partly reflects a popular disdain for her kitschy style, only gathering just over $7 million on it’s opening weekend.
That’s not really terrible (the budget of the film was $16 million), but it’s pretty terrible, especially considering the marketing behind the film. After listening to interviews with Cody, I sense that she’s the kind of person who follows her bliss and would likely move in a different direction than screenwriting at the drop of a hat. However, with the news that she’s adapting the book series “Sweet Valley High,” it seems that Jennifer’s Body and Juno backlash aren’t enough to kill Diablo.
Cody will also produce the film version of the novels for Universal alongside Mason Novick, Adam Siegel and Marc Platt.
While I’m unfamiliar with the novels — they’re not really up my alley — it seems there’s been literally hundreds of them, along with a TV series in the mid-1990s. The novels “followed the lives of identical twins with dissimilar personalities — the sensitive and practical Elizabeth and the flighty and boy-crazy Jessica — in the fictional town of Sweet Valley.” Yeah. I can see how Cody might be interested in that.
If the film’s not being fast-tracked, it’s likely to not be pushed forward until 2010. In the meantime, Diablo Cody is producing an adaptation of Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament for Fox Searchlight, scripted by Geoff LaTulippe.
