Katherine Heigl Lines Up a Familiar New Thriller and a Puppet Comedy
Posted 02.03.12 by Ryan
Another day, another thriller about prosopagnosia.
French writer-director Julien Magnat's 2011 straight-to-DVD indie thriller Faces in the Crowd dealt with the disorder, which causes "face blindness" or the inability to recognize faces, in a story that saw Milla Jovovich stalked by a serial killer after suffering from a head injury. Katherine Heigl is the latest actress to have the affliction in the similarly plotted Face Blind.
Deadline reports that Heigl will produce and star in the movie, where she will play a psychologist who is struck with the affliction and finds herself stalked by the man who terrorized one of her patients. See how Face Blind is different from Faces in the Crowd? Jovovich played a schoolteacher, not a psychologist.
Face Blind was scripted by Dominic Harari and Teresa De Pelegri (The Dutchman's Island), but no director was mentioned in the report. Magnat could be available, and is familiar with the subject matter.
Face Blind isn't the only project Heigl is lining up. Variety reports that Heigl is also in final negotiations to star in The Happytime Murders for director Brian Henson (Muppets in Space) and The Jim Henson Co. Todd Berger (The Scenesters) wrote the script, which is set in a world where humans and puppets co-exist, but puppets are second class citizens. The movie centers on the puppet cast of an '80s children's TV show who are being murdered off and the disgraced detective-turned-private-eye puppet that takes the case. The movie has been in development since 2008.
Neither of the two projects have a reported start date, so it's anyone's guess as to which one will be her next movie, but both seem to be a deliberate change from the string of rom-coms she's been making of late. Heigl's most recent effort, One for the Money, was a potential franchise for the former Grey's Anatomy actress, as it was based on the first of a series of successful novels by Janet Evanovich. The movie, however, only squeeked out third place when it opened last weekend for a total of $11.8 million dollars, which doesn't even cover Heigl's reported $15 million price tag.
One for the Money follows in the footsteps of Heigl's previous movies — 2010's Killers and Life as We Know It — both of which were destroyed by critics and fared either poorly (Killers) or moderately (Life as We Know It) at the box office. Last year's New Year's Eve fared better, but the success of the ensemble rom-com could hardly be contributed to Heigl alone. Perhaps the change of genre will see a boost in Heigl's box office numbers.