Certainly, if you had to hitch your wagon to two rising actresses, you could do far worse than Emma Roberts and AnnaSophia Robb. Both of them have seen their place in Hollywood slowly moving on the uptick. Roberts has been quietly amassing a good body of work, dabbing mostly in indies like “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and “The Art of Getting By” but also making a pit stop into a franchise with “Scream 4.” Meanwhile Robb, was probably best known as Violet Beauregarde in Tim Burton‘s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” until earlier this year when she led the sleeper hit “Soul Surfer.”
For the folks over at Alloy Entertainment and Southpaw Entertainment, they are hoping the stock of both thesps continue to rise as THR reports they’ve been cast in the developing drama “Anything But Ordinary.” And the story definitely lives up to its title (and sounds like an Oliver Sacks patient case). Based on the forthcoming book by Lara Avary, the story will center on “a seventeen-year-old diving phenom who suffers a tragic accident during her final Olympic trials. When she wakes from a coma five years later, as a 21-year old, she is considered a medical miracle. But what no one else knows is that the young woman has become a synesthete, processing words and numbers through color, the third dimension and sound.” Wow. Certainly an original premise that opens up a lot of opportunity for a creative on screen approach but that will all lie in the hands of the director.
With a resume that boasts “Just Wright” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” helmer Sanaa Hamri certainly is an “interesting” choice to guide this movie, but our optimism isn’t buoyed by the fact that TV writer Charlie Craig (“Pretty Little Liars,” “Booker,” “Two“) has penned the script. But hey, plenty of time to get this one right and we’re curious to see how they’ll translate the experiences on a synesthete visually. No word on when this will roll, but the plan is to try and get the book and movie released at the same time.