‘Little House on the Prairie’ Movie Wrangles a Director

There's been a 'Little House on the Prairie' movie in the works for some time now, and while that doesn't sound like a likely revival when you look at the current crop of reboots and adaptations of classic series, it's certainly one of the more interesting projects in the pipeline. Previously, the project had David Gordon Green attached to direct, but now it's found someone new to sit in the director's chair: 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' helmer Sean Durkin. Given these choices, are we looking at a bit of a darker take on 'Little House'?

THR reports that Durkin is in negotiations to direct the project, which you'll probably remember best as the NBC series that originally ran from 1974 to 1983. That show was based on a series of children's books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, in turn based on her own experiences as a child.

The show starred Michael Landon as the father of a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota in the 1880s. 'Little House on the Prairie' revolved around patriarch Charles Ingalls, his homemaker wife, their four daughters, and later, their three adopted children. The show dealt with serious themes, including a harrowing, bizarre episode titled "Sylvia," in which a character is raped by a mime -- yes, really.

In our wildest dreams, it's stuff like this that Durkin is actually adapting. Given his debut feature, 'Martha Marcy May Marlene,' we kind of want to see him tackle a version of 'Little House on the Prairie' that's pleasant but a little off-putting -- sort of like a quaint pilgrimage into a nightmarish dreamscape. Or, you know, they can just walk through fields of wheat in aprons and deal with the unpleasantness of running out of coal or whatever.