Literature - Nancy Drew

5. Nancy Drew and the Stolen Movies

Hollywood is always in need of good stories to make gook films. It happens now and has happened in the past. A bad story can provoke a big money loss, so they'd better look for stories they know are going to succeed. What about the adventures of a girl sleuth that has sold thousands of books? It should be a hit!

But the adaptations Hollywood has made hadn't been as successful as they wanted. Sam Tweedle says in Pop Culture Addict that they had gone "from great, to good, to bad, to retarded in a 65-year period". Let's see this evolution, which seems to have been turned into good with the last film.

The first time Nancy Drew appeared in the big screen was in 1938, in a 4-film-series starring Bonita Granville and directed by William Clemens. There were good films, but, according to Tweedle, "they don't resemble the books at all". Nancy's character is different, she is not as mature as in the books, and the plots are new and don't follow the classic formula. Boyfriend Ned is renamed Ted and friends George and Bess are eliminated completely.

At the end of the 1970's there was a TV series called "The hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries", starred by a 24-year-old actress, Pamela Sue Martin, and then replaced by Janet-Louise Johnson. It ran from 1977 to 1979.

There was another try to adapt Nancy Drew for a TV series in 1995, and a TV film in 2002 made by Disney. Neither of them was good nor had any success.

On June 2007, Warner Brothers Pictures released a movie directed by Andrew Fleming, with Emma Roberts (Julia's niece) as Nancy Drew. She moves from River Heights to Los Angeles, where she has to solve the mysterious death of a Hollywood actress. "Nancy Drew: the Mystery in Hollywood Hills" debuted on June 15, 2007. The first weekend on show it was among the ten most viewed films in the United States. Will it be a sequel?