Will Smith as Daddy Warbucks in an Annie remake? It really is a hard-knock life…

THE KARATE KID apparently did not satiate Will Smith’s need to mine the 80s for movies to remake for his kids. Smith is developing a remake of the musical ANNIE, which would star his daughter Willow and potentially her real life father as her adopted movie father, Daddy Warbucks.

Willow had something of a novelty hit last year with the obnoxiously catchy ditty “Whip My Hair” and would likely bring a new stack of songs to Smith’s revamped musical. Word is that Smith is already collaborating with Jay-Z, who made the leap to hip-hop’s A-list after his 1998 release of “Hard Knock Life”, on the film’s soundtrack.

On paper, it’s a no-brainer and almost hard to fault Smith and Sony Pictures for developing the idea but ohmygod this is already annoying the shit out of me. I mean, let’s be honest: despite it’s presence in pop culture, ANNIE is already one of the most obnoxious musicals (due in no large part to the fact that the lead, Annie, is written as a precocious and “spunky” little twit, with her tousled mass of orange hair. We were supposed to sympathize with her, the poor Little Orphan Annie, victim of the nasty Miss Hannigan, but the way the character was written (and subsequently performed), it was hard to ever feel for her.

All this said, we really have been waiting for the first great hip-hop musical and Jay-Z is just the guy to bring it to us. He’s the only reason I’m hating the notion of this idea on sight.