Fans of self-immolating towns, rapist mimes, and other artifacts of folksy country goodness got some bad news last year, when new Sony head Tom Rothman announced that Sean Durkin’s film version of Little House On The Prairie was being put on the back burner for budget concerns. (Most of the project’s $45 million budget, presumably, was to transform some mere mortal’s limp, pallid coiffure into Michael Landon-esque locks of glory.)
Paramount apparently doesn’t think that’s too high a price to revisit the dark dystopia of Walnut Grove, MN, though; Variety is reporting that the studio has picked up the project for itself, with Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene) still attached to direct. He’ll be working from the previously announced script from Shame and Suffragette screenwriter Abi Morgan, adapting the surprisingly dark frontier childhood captured in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s bestselling books, which served as the basis for the long-running NBC series.