Emilia Clarke is probably excited for another chance to rinse off the dust of Westeros and not have to act alongside a tennis ball on a stick representing the eyeline of a giant dragon. Deadline reports the actor (most recently seen in cinemas in modest hit Me Before You) is set to star in a remake of The Beauty Inside, a 2015 Korean romantic comedy with a premise that exists several rows above “high concept.” The film tells the story of a man who wakes up each morning in a different body and tries desperately to stay connected to the woman he loves. So, kind of like if The Thing was a romance.
The noteworthy part of this story isn’t so much Clarke’s casting as it is the price paid for the idea, “Hey, what if we hired the guys who wrote The Fault In Our Stars to remake this weird Korean body-swap romance?” Fresh off their hiring to pen the big-screen adaptation of X-Men spinoff team New Mutants, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber are coming onboard this new project thanks to Fox 2000 outbidding five other studios by paying $2 million—and that’s just for the pitch, let alone a final script. Deadline notes the price is awfully high, but that it “reflects the quote of writers who are proven hitmakers in the genre.” Which is so true, except for the part where they also wrote the adaptations of The Spectacular Now and Paper Towns, neither of which lit up the box office, plus the latter kind of sucked. Also, The Fault In Our Stars was a massive international bestselling book, to boot—but sure, proven hitmakers. Whatever helps you sleep at night, Fox 2000.