Summit to Adapt ‘Men are From Mars’

Published by Jeff Leins on April 20, 2010

Summit Entertainment has purchased the rights to John Gray’s bestseller “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus” with the intention of creating a feature film and TV series.  The 1992 hit spawned over a dozen similar non-fiction relationship books totaling 50 million copies sold.

Producers Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun said in the press release, “While men and women may never truly speak the same language, we’re thrilled to explore their perpetually hilarious, painful and romantic conflicts on the big screen.”

This is just the latest in a string of books simply lending their title and general topic to a narrative.  The most successful to date was He’s Just Not That Into You, which took the blunt advice book and turned it into a romantic comedy with an all-star ensemble.

While Summit didn’t provide details on how Gray’s book will become a movie, you can bet they’ll be mining the stereotypes for frustrated exchanges where [insert gender here] just doesn’t get it.  Judging from the success of HJNTIY and this year’s Valentine’s Day, I wouldn’t be surprised if they followed a similar formula in the adaptation process.

That seems to be where rom-coms are heading.  Traditionally they would just plug in “it girl” X (think Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Aniston) and “popular guy” Y (Matthew McConaughey, Gerard Butler) into a schmaltzy story with predictable turns and count their money.  The new strategy is to line up a parade of stars who only need to be on set for mere hours but look good on the poster.  Then weakly wind their plot threads together into an over-arching theme.  Repeat.

I can’t wait for Patrick Dempsey to explain how much he likes sports while Kate Hudson can’t contain her excitement about shopping!  Men really are from Mars and women are from a different planet!