Warner Bros. has enlisted director Greg Berlanti and writer Matthew Robinson to bring Little Shop of Horrors, the campy classic about a carnivorous plant with an insatiable hunger, back to the big screen. This brand-new musical adaptation of the 1960 low-budget Roger Corman black-comedy, horror movie will reintroduce the story of a meek flower shop worker that brings a persuasive, talking plant back to life only to discover that it craves human flesh, forcing him to kill to keep it alive.
Berlanti is the executive producer responsible for the CW’s many hit DC Superheroes-based TV shows, such as The Flash, Supergirl and Arrow. Robinson wrote the script for the 2009 Ricky Gervais film, The Invention of Lying. Warners’ Niija Kuykendall will oversee the project for the studio.
This will be Little Shop’s third film incarnation—the second being the 1986 Frank Oz hit musical adaptation starring Rick Moranis as Seymour, the insecure flower shop assistant that secretly lusts after his co-worker Audrey, played by Ellen Greene and Steve Martin as the infamously sadistic dentist/boyfriend.
Warner’s version will introduce a new generation to the tale with a much larger budget to the original film. Corman’s classic was shot with $28,000 in two days, repurposing the still-standing set for the director’s 1959 film, A Bucket of Blood. Most notable is that the original Little Shop featured a young Jack Nicholson, whose small role as the masochistic, dental patient became an iconic image that was displayed on its home video releases. In 1982, the story became a hit off-Broadway as a horror-comedy-rock-musical, with songs by composer Alan Menken and written by Howard Ashman. It later moved to the Orpheum Theatre for a five-year run.
