Movie producer Scott Rudin (Captain Phillips, Moneyball, No Country for Old Men) just hired Sean Durkin, 32, to direct Sony’s adaptation of Little House on the Prairie for the big screen. The film will be based on the iconic TV series starring Michael Landon as ‘Pa’ and Melissa Gilbert as ‘Half-Pint’ living the pioneer life in 1880s America, and by the series of children’s books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
The TV show first aired on NBC in 1974 and ended in 1983, when Durkin was barely two years old… in England. Although born in Canada Durkin was raised in North London until his family moved to Manhattan when he was 12. He graduated from the film school at New York University in 2006. His first feature film is the 2011 thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene starring Elizabeth Olsen. Olsen plays a young woman suffering from delusions and paranoia after returning to her family from an abusive cult in the Catskill Mountains. Roger Ebert gave the movie three-and-a-half stars (out of four) but complained that the movie’s chronological shifters were “a shade too clever. In a serious film, there is no payoff for trickery.” Warning to Durkin: Little House on the Prairie fans do not like change or trickery!
