Could the next La La Land already be on the way?

Damien Chazelle’s lat­est fea­ture is cur­rent­ly the talk of Tin­sel­town, but could the next La La Land already be on the way? Dead­line is report­ing that Max Minghel­la is set to direct his first film, titled Teen Spir­it, about an East­ern Euro­pean teenag­er who enters an inter­na­tion­al singing competition.

Minghel­la, who has starred in The Ides of March and The Social Net­work, is the son of the late Antho­ny Minghel­la, the direc­tor of The Eng­lish Patient and The Tal­ent­ed Mr Rip­ley, which bodes well for this excit­ing next stage in his career.

Writ­ten by Minghel­la in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the actor Jamie Bell, Teen Spir­it is being pro­duced by Fred Berg­er, whose most recent screen cred­it is – you guessed it – La La Land. Appar­ent­ly eager to recre­ate this win­ning for­mu­la, Berg­er has enlist­ed the serves of the musi­cal team behind Chazelle’s smash hit, includ­ing music pro­duc­er Mar­ius DeVries who pre­vi­ous­ly worked on Moulin Rouge.

Teen Spir­it is being billed ​“a styl­ish spin on the Cin­derel­la sto­ry”, as an unas­sum­ing girl, Vio­let, sets out on road to pop-star­dom in the hope that she can leave her dif­fi­cult home life behind her. While per­form­ing at a glob­al singing com­pe­ti­tion, she realis­es that raw tal­ent isn’t the only thing need­ed to suc­ceed in this cru­el, cut­throat world.

There are no actors attached to the project as of yet, and no release date has been con­firmed. It’s also unclear whether either Minghel­la or Bell will fea­ture. We’ve seen this kind of com­ing-of-age sto­ry told so many times before, but if Minghel­la can bring a touch of charm­ing and orig­i­nal­i­ty, not to men­tion some catchy new songs, then Teen Spir­it could well be anoth­er big hit.

Would you like to see more musi­cals like this on the back of La La Land’s suc­cess? Let us know @LWLies