Elizabeth Banks Will Produce And Star In A Live-Action Movie Version Of “The Magic School Bus”
Beep beep! Toot toot! All aboard The Magic School Bus! The yellow bus that takes kids on magical scientific field trips every damn school day (permission slips be damned) is getting a live-action remake, courtesy of Elizabeth Banks’ company, Brownstone Productions, and producer Marc Platt. Hopefully it goes better than Elizabeth’s Charlie’s Angels reboot.
Elizabeth will also star as ginger icon Ms. Frizzle (voiced by Lily Tomlin in the original PBS TV adaptation, and Kate McKinnon in the recent reboot). Production better get working on a prosthetic nose, STAT. Or they can just re-use Nicole Kidman’s from The Hours.
A producer at Scholastic Entertainment said (via Deadline):
“We are delighted to bring to life the iconic Ms. Frizzle and her zest for knowledge and adventure in a fresh new way that inspires the next generation of kids to explore science and supports the dedicated teachers who help make science real and accessible for young learners every day”
“Zest” is one word for Ms. Frizzle’s teaching style. “Unhinged” is another. My childhood anxiety wouldn’t have been able to handle that shit. Those kids got baked into a pie! Transformed into reptiles! Shrunk down and entered another student’s body without his consent. But what happened after the kids aged out of Frizzle’s year? Was it just back to the normal curriculum? What kind of lifelong psychological scars did it cause? That’s the movie I wanna see. Poor “I shoulda stayed home today” Arnold in intense group therapy.
But seriously, I loved The Magic School Bus as a kid. It’s the only reason I know anything about science. For example, the small intestine is pink and bumpy, Pluto is ice cold, and some sharks have little fish that stick to their tummies, and somehow that helps them. So I’m down for this movie, and wondering if the gigantic butthole is going to make a cameo appearance:
The only bummer is that I initially misread Elizabeth Banks as Elizabeth Berkley. At first, I was like, “OK, weird choice”, but then I thought about it, and Berkley’s kinda the perfect Ms. Frizzle! Big curly hair, at home, playing both intellectual (Jessie Spano) and kooky (Nomi Malone), and has a touch of the crazy eyes. When I realized my mistake, I was disappointed. #BerkleyForFrizzle