Big news stories always end up as films. September 11th spurred roly-poly Michael Moore on to make Fahrenheit 911, but thankfully Madeleine McCann won't be joining that club any time soon.
Even though film is just about the only outlet which hasn't received a full-on assault by the McCanns as they try to track their missing daughter, the couple have denied that they're planning to turn the search for Madeleine into a feature-length movie, contrary to rumours yesterday.
So, sorry, you'll all just have to pay to be depressed by something else now.
Before we continue, we must stress that a film about Madeleine McCann has already been filmed and released. However, this film was shelved in the UK as it bore too many resemblances to the real life case. Poor Ben Affleck must have been pretty pissed off about this. His film Gone Baby Gone – which was made ages before the McCann saga began – was all about a girl who was left alone by her parents and had something to do with drugs and child abuse. But most freaky of all, the girl who played the abandoned child was also called Madeleine! This surely would be something that would cause Derek Acora to twitch about in excitement and get his Scouse ghost antics going into overdrive.
Besides, it's a rubbish idea anyway. It probably would have only been shown on Channel 5 and we'd all have known the plot anyway. As The Times reported:
“The parents of Madeleine McCann are considering giving the go-ahead to a film about their missing daughter following an approach by a major entertainment firm. The couple’s spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, confirmed that a meeting with the agency IMG took place last month but he added that Gerry and Kate McCann did not attend and nothing has yet been agreed.”
Like the race for governor of California, this could have thrown up a comical list of past-it actors for the various roles in this potential cringeworthy film. That is, unless the McCanns wanted hog all the best roles for themselves:
“The spokesman would not speculate on whether Gerry and Kate would play themselves in any movie or whether their roles would be played by celebrity actors."
Let’s just hope this isn’t another campaign that will result in more endless accusations, finger-pointing and dead ends.
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