Felicity Huffman won’t care for this one. Erik Feig’s Picturestart and Patrick Wachsberger’s Picture Perfect Entertainment are developing an English-language remake of a Thai heist film in which a group of high school seniors team up to take down a rigged college-admissions system.
The remake is of the 2017 Thai film “Bad Genius” (“Chalard Games Goeng”), which was the highest-grossing Thai film of 2017 and also the highest-grossing Thai film in its international release. Nattawat Poonpiriya directed and produced the film from GDH 559 about a high school genius who travels to Sydney, Australia, to take an international exam and then send the results back to her friends in Thailand before the exam takes place back home.
Incredibly, Picturestart and Picture Perfect secured the rights to the remake before the current college admissions scandal involving actresses Huffman and Lori Laughlin broke in March.
Picturestart and Picture Perfect are both developing, producing and financing “Bad Genius.” Eva Anderson will write the script, and Jessica Switch and Julia Enescu will oversee for Picturestart.
Anderson is a co-executive producer for “Briarpatch” on USA and a consulting producer for “Dispatches from Elsewhere” on AMC. She was previously a staff writer and producer for “You’re the Worst” on FX. She is represented by Reign Agency and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner & Klein.
“Bad Genius” won a record-breaking 12 categories at the 27th Suphannahong National Film Awards, as well as multiple awards on the international festival circuit, including at Austin’s Fantastic Fest and the Fantasia Film Festival.