It's a Hard Knock Life in the New 'Annie' Trailer (VIDEO)

This Christmas will see a giant musical showdown in the form of Sony's "Annie" facing off against Disney's "Into the Woods," two lavish Broadway adaptations with major star power and a contemporary slant. (We imagine it will be like something from "West Side Story," except even less threatening.) While we haven't seen anything from "Into the Woods," save for a photo of Meryl Streep looking really witchy, "Annie" has already unleashed two trailers, the latest of which (courtesy of Yahoo), shows much more of the starry cast and the movie's updated storyline.



While the original "Annie" was set during the Great Depression, this version is completely modernized. Jamie Foxx plays the Daddy Warbucks stand-in, a mayoral candidate who looks to soften him image by aligning himself with the cuddly, titular orphan (Quvenzhane Wallis from "Beasts of the Southern Wild"). Cameron Diaz plays the new Miss Hannigan (and gets one of the bigger laughs of the trailer), who runs the orphanage where Annie lives, and Rose Byrne plays Foxx's personal assistant. (Bobby Cannavale plays Foxx's political advisor.)



You get more of a sense of the overall spirit of this new "Annie," which seems to keep much of the tone of the original 1977 Broadway musical (and subsequent 1982 film) while updating it for modern audiences. Keep in mind that one of the biggest question marks of the movie nobody has heard yet: the new Jay-Z songs written specifically for the movie (he's also a producer). Hopefully it'll be better than his work for Ridley Scott's "American Gangster."



Well, no matter how this "Annie" turns out, it can't be worse than "Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge," a stage play that opened in the late eighties and died a horrible, horrible death.



"Annie" opens on December 19^th and will directly enter the musical thunderdome: two musicals enter, only one leaves.







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