Meryl Streep Signs Up For Horrible-Looking Mamma Mia Film

There's every chance that you've seen the Abba musical Mamma Mia - at the moment it's playing in 16 different countries and has made $1.6 billion by basically shoe-horning as many Abba songs as it can into a confusing story that nobody cares about.

And stop looking so pleased with yourself if you've escaped the brain-pummelling sensation of watching Mamma Mia in a theatre, because your escape routes are currently being blocked off - there's going to be a movie made of Mamma Mia especially for people who want to pay half their weekly wages to watch some people who aren't Abba singing a load of over-familiar Abba songs while sitting on a sticky chair surrounded by wankers who won't stop throwing popcorn or talking to their friends on their mobiles all the effing time. Anyway, Meryl Streep's going to be in the Mamma Mia film, so that's something.

Meryl Streep is like buses. Not because she's rectangular, has a dirty exhaust pipe and gets stroppy if you don't have the correct change, but because you spend years basking in happily Streep-free news and then two Meryl Streep stories come along in quick succession. Only yesterday Mr Blackwell named Meryl Streep as the tenth worst-dressed woman in the world, and now she's been signed up for a bloody Abba musical.

You may remember that the idea of a movie based on Abba musical Mamma Mia was mooted almost a year ago, and you may also remember that we took that opportunity to blame Mamma Mia for everything from half-baked popstars getting their songs made into musicals - did anyone see the Rod Stewart musical? Thought not - to the way that people don't understand why Abba are a bit naff any more. With a bit more thought we could have blamed Abba and Mamma Mia for the Ebola virus and the continued unrest in the Middle East too, but we missed our chance.

Anyway, things went quiet after this announcement, and people either assumed that the Mamma Mia movie had been shelved - or they forgot about it entirely - but now it's back, and it has a cast comprised of Meryl Streep and probably a bunch of other people who don't realise the full extent of what they're doing to us, as BBC News reports:

Streep is expected to play Donna, whose daughter Sophie is about to be married and spends the musical trying to find out the identity of her father. "She encapsulates the spirit and energy and has the powerhouse qualities that character requires," Craymer said. Filming is due to take place in London and Greece later this year. Actor Tom Hanks' production company Playtone is producing the film, with Abba songwriters Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson named as executive producers.

You'd have thought that after making The Da Vinci Code Tom Hanks would understand that you can't make a great film out of something just because it's popular. And Tom Hanks won't even be starring in Mamma Mia, which means we don't even get to laugh at his weird hair, either. Bloody Abba, why can't they just be happy having the best ever Eurovision song and the worst ever X Factor theme night?   

The Meryl Streep-starring Mamma Mia movie is expected to open in 2009. If you start digging a hole now it might just be deep enough for you to avoid all the hype by then.

Read more:

Streep 'to star in Abba musical' - BBC