An Easy A spinoff is in the works from the film's original screenwriter. In the latter half of the 2000s, Emma Stone began making a name for herself with a handful of popular teen comedies. Though she’d had the odd television role prior to 2007, it was her role as Jonah Hill’s love interest in Superbad that really gave her career a boost.
From that point onward, things began to move at a rapid rate for Stone. Her natural comedic ability and on-screen poise made her an ideal candidate for a leading role, but it took several more years for it to become clear to the right people that Stone was a talent that could be banked on. In 2010, Sony took that chance, casting a 21-year-old Stone as the too-clever-for-her-good high school senior Olive in director Will Gluck’s Easy A. The film was inspired by the 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne novel The Scarlet Letter, in which a 17th century Puritan society forces a pregnant woman to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her dress as an act of public shaming for her supposed infidelity. In Gluck’s version, however, the aim is pure comedy as Olive places a scarlet “A” on herself in an attempt to own the false rumors circulating about her.
While the film was supposedly written in a matter of days and shot on a relatively small budget of $8 million, it raked in a massive $75 million worldwide. And, as is almost always the case in Hollywood whenever a film performs that well, the story continues in some capacity. According to Variety, that appears to be exactly what’s happening. Though it’s still very early on in its development, Screen Gems is getting set to produce a spinoff of the highly successful 2010 comedy.
This time around, writer Bert Royal (who wrote the original Easy A), has again been tasked with writing the spinoff, but this time he will also direct. This will mark the successful writer’s first crack at directing, and given that he’s already got a strong feel for the material, it very well could be a successful debut. Other similarities in this updated version will be the film’s setting, which will be a return to the same school as its 2010 predecessor, as well as a continued exploration of the themes that the first film embraced, such as truth, sexuality, and self-esteem. Unfortunately, despite still being early on into the process, it’s looking unlikely that Stone will return. Stone’s career has skyrocketed since 2010, reaching particularly lofty heights with her 2017 leading actress Oscar for her multi-talented role in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land.
As previously stated, it’s not surprising that a film as financially successful as Easy A would return to theaters in some form or another. Whether or not a spinoff on this title is a necessity is another story altogether, of course. The true test of this material lies with Royal, whose previous success seems to be all the incentive Screen Gems needed to set things in motion. However, it’s clear that Stone has outgrown the teen film genre at this point in her career, making it hard to believe that she’d return in any capacity. Still, for those who didn’t come of age watching the original, enough has already changed since 2010 to keep the film’s subject matter entirely relevant.
Source: Variety