A new Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors remake ensnares Chris Evans

In the Hol­ly­wood life cycle, noth­ing ever tru­ly dies – it is mere­ly laid to tem­po­rary rest until it can be rein­car­nat­ed. What begins as a cheapo B‑movie may gain a sec­ond life on Broad­way, then a third back in Hol­ly­wood, and then yet anoth­er gen­er­a­tions later.

Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors, the Roger Cor­man hor­ror­show turned musi­cal turned movie-musi­cal, shall be turn­ing movie-musi­cal once more, accord­ing to Dead­line. Pow­er pro­duc­er Greg Berlan­ti will direct a new adap­ta­tion that has already attract­ed a high-pro­file cast, the lat­est addi­tion being Not Anoth­er Teen Movie star Chris Evans.

He’s slat­ed to por­tray deranged den­tist Orin Scriv­el­lo, the prin­ci­pal antag­o­nist to lov­able dweeb Sey­mour (Taron Egerton, though like Evans, he’s yet to offi­cial­ly sign on the dot­ted line). Our mild-man­nered florist lands in the mid­dle of an apoc­a­lyp­tic sit­u­a­tion when he cul­ti­vates a killer plant from out­er space (to be voiced by Bil­ly Porter, of TV’s Pose) named after his crush Audrey (Scar­lett Johans­son).

Some fuss has already been raised amongst the­ater purists over whether this musi­cal has been undu­ly hun­ked up, with both the roles of Sey­mour and Scriv­el­lo hav­ing tak­en a dra­mat­ic step up in terms of sex appeal. In the 1986 film, Rick Mora­nis occu­pied the place of Egerton, and Steve Mar­tin assayed Evans’ role – this, com­ing hot off of Jake Gyl­len­haal​‘s Off-Broad­way turn as Sey­mour in 2015. Let the neb­bish have his day!

But on the whole, the thought of Evans belt­ing out Scrivello’s sig­na­ture tune about the fin­er points of mad­ness and oral hygiene makes for a high­ly promis­ing prospect. Egerton’s already proven he’s got the pipes, and now it’s Evans’ turn to prove that he can car­ry a tune all the way to nation­wide cineplexes.