Hailee Steinfeld may have a shot at some sort of record for most projects confirmed and unreleased at one time, with a handful of pending credits including “Romeo and Juliet,” “Ender’s Game,” and Tommy Lee Jones’ “The Homesman,” which was recently announced. Now she’s adding to that list — Deadline reports that Steinfeld has signed on to Kyle Newman’s “Barely Lethal,” in which she will play a trained teenage assassin attending a regular high school.
Steinfeld’s involvement is one part of the news. The other is the film itself, which comes to us from the director of “Fanboys.” Obviously, the title “Barely Lethal” is somewhat provocative, but the logline provided on IMDB is just plain off-putting. “A 16-year-old international assassin yearning for a ‘normal’ adolescence fakes her own death and enrolls as a senior in a suburban high school. She quickly learns that being popular can be more painful than getting water-boarded.” Umm… no. But perhaps we shouldn’t expect much when it comes to movies produced by Brett Ratner.
Sounds like “Hanna” mixed with a little John Hughes for good measure? We’re not sure about this one, given the embarrassment that was “Fanboys” and the unknown status of the writer, John D’Arco. But we guess it’s interesting to see Steinfeld mixing it up genre-wise, with romance, sci-fi, period, and whatever-this-turns-out-to-be projects all to come.