Simply doing an adaptation with authentic bonnets is old hat.
Now, do it like Lost in Austen. Take a modern character and transport her back to Regency England and let the swooning commence.
Or do it like Becoming Jane; make up a story about Jane Austen so you can just do the Pride and Prejudice story again.
Or like Bridget Jones Diary.
Or like the Bollywood Bride and Prejudice.
It’s not that hard. I had a moment only yesterday between reading Colleen Mcullough’s “The Indepence of Miss Mary Bennet” and snuggling down to watch The Jane Austen Book Club so I came up with a few ideas of my own.
Sydney CEO is tragic victim of GFC. Now the Balmoral home is on the market, and his five daughters are forced to go on line to look for husbands. Elizabeth, headstrong yet beautiful, accidently emails the head of Darcy Dating. She is appalled at his arrogance and refuses to supply a photo.
Do an Aussie blokes version. Five brothers all sign up to play Rugby League. However , owing to past problems there is a new behaviour code and all League players must now be married. All five brothers need to find a wife before the season begins. An enticing young woman called Darcy moves next door and the second eldest boy, Les Bennet, think she’s right up herself.
The French Lieutenant’s Austen takes a now forgotten novel and re-works it. Actors playing in a new production of Pride and Prejudice experience uncanny parallels between their own life and the life the Bennets and Mr Darcy. In fact not just the actors but the entire cast, crew and production office all find themselves falling in love with each other. The women are all beautiful and witty, the men are all haughty and handsome. At some point, they all fall off a horse.
Don’t forget to include the ‘truth universally acknowledged’ quote. Quote it in full “.. that a man possessed of a good fortune must be in want of wife.” , or adapt it to your plot - “That a single man possessed of a pulse must be available to date your best friend…” So witty.
Don’t tell me Dan Brown isn’t jumping on that Austen bandcarriage. A previously unknown Jane Austen manuscript is disovered. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in a possession of an unpublished Austen manuscript will end up dead. The clues are all references to Austen novels and Detective Darcy joins with literary expert Lizzie Bennett to track down the manuscript. His haughtiness clashes with her wittiness, but they find love in the ruins of Northanger Abbey.
Or what about a literary scandal story. Long lost letters are found that prove that Jane Austen was a man. In fact several men, in fact a dining club that met Tuesdays nights at the Garrick Club and who wrote the novels over port to prove that women cannot write. A huge fight erupts in the London Literary scene between librarians, feminists and women on the side and Boris Johnston, the Top Gear team and the Spectator magazine on the other. Eventually it’s proved to be a hoax after an expert reveals that one of the supposedly long lost letters mentions how good Scarlett Johanson would be in the role of Emma.
All of this pails alongside the work of Seth Grahame-Smith who is about to release a book entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Using the modern approach of the mash up – slam two unrelated genres together and hope for a hit – the brain feeders arrive at Hertfordshire and only Darcy and the regiment camped nearby can stop them.
If only it was that easy to stop the constant mashing and rehashing of Jane Austen.