Swedish filmmaker Ninja Thyberg has been making the festival rounds with her feature directorial debut Pleasure, and now Hollywood has assigned her to bring an established property back to the screen. Thyberg will write and direct a new adaptation of the 1984 John Updike novel The Witches of Eastwick (buy a copy HERE), which was previously made into a film by George Miller in 1987 (watch that HERE), for Warner Bros. Eastwick was also the inspiration for two failed series pilots and a series that was cancelled during its first season.
Doug Wick and Lucy Fischer are producing Thyberg’s version of The Witches of Eastwick. Filming will take place in the United States, but a production start date has not yet been scheduled.
Miller’s film starred Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer. It had the following synopsis:
Three small-town friends, Alexandra (Cher), Jane (Sarandon) and Sukie (Pfeiffer), each having lost the man in their lives, are feeling unfulfilled — until a furtive stranger, Daryl Van Horne (Nicholson), arrives and begins courting each of them in turn. Eventually, Daryl tells them that they are witches. But as the three friends spend more time at his mansion, enjoying themselves and learning about their powers, they begin to worry about Daryl’s ultimate intentions.
Thyberg’s film Pleasure stars Sofia Kappel as
Bella Cherry, who arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming an adult film star, but soon learns that fame won’t come easy as she harnesses her ambition and cunning to rise to the top of this mesmerizing and singular world.
According to the publication date on this Face-Off article, it’s been about five years since I last watched The Witches of Eastwick, and that was many years after my previous viewing, so I honestly don’t remember much about it. I’m open to seeing what Ninja Thyberg, who certainly has a cool name, does with the concept.