Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White; they’re all fairy tale characters that have recently been mined for darker, more adult re-tellings on the big screen. If Hollywood is good at anything, it’s taking a trend and running with it, so it’s no big surprise that Sony is now looking to do a bleak retelling of The Little Mermaid, especially since Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides recently opened and had a big scene full of angry, killer mermaids. I give it two weeks before we’re reporting on a remake of Splash. “The Little Mermaid” started off as a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, got a very high profile Disney animated adaptation, and eventually inspired Carolyn Turgeon’s book “Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale.” It’s this book that Sony has optioned to turn into a feature. Unlike Disney’s take on the character, this time the story is told not from the perspective of the mermaid, but of a desperate young princess. She needs to marry a prince in order to create a political bond with a rival Kingdom, or her home is pretty much going to be in shambles. So, she makes a long journey to his kingdom in order to try and get the marriage together. Unfortunately, when she gets there she finds out that the prince has already fallen in love with a beautiful young mermaid who has sacrificed her fishy ways in order to spend her life with them. That bitch. The book will be [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr heads into the January movie season with a heavy heart. He checks out Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest award bait flick, Country Strong. Hint, hint… no one is taking the bait. Then he tries like hell to see Season of the Witch, but the lack of regional press screenings and midnight shows keep him and Nicolas Cage’s mullet sadly apart. What else would you expect from the industry coming back from winter break. After all, this is the time of year that the mega-hits Leprechaun, BloodRayne and Bride Wars came out.

Robert Levin reviews a Sundance 2009 title that stars Aaron Johnson from Kick-Ass and Carey Mulligan, that painfully adorable actress who got nominated for an Oscar for An Education. Interested?