'The Hustle' Trailer: Anne Hathaway And Rebel Wilson Are Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

I have absolutely no problem with female-centric remakes of older films. At the same time, wouldn't it be cool if filmmakers started telling more and more brand new stories centered around female characters? Until we get to that point, we'll have to make due with films like The Hustle, a female-centric remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (which itself was a remake of the 1964 film Bedtime Story).

Like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Hustle follows two dueling con artists who decide to team up for a bigger purpose. Here, Hathaway and Wilson are "female scam artists, one low rent and the other high class, who team up to take down the dirty rotten men who have wronged them." That's a bit different from Scoundrels, which had conmen Michael Caine and Steve Martin both trying to con the same woman out of her fortune.

I love Anne Hathaway, I like Rebel Wilson, I think this premise has potential. But so far, the footage released for The Hustle just isn't doing it for me. I will say that I'm enjoying the goofy British accent Hathaway is doing here, and that might be enough to make me enjoy the rest of the film.

In addition to Hathaway and Wilson, The Hustle stars Alex Sharp, Tim Blake Nelson, Ingrid Oliver, Emma Davies, and Dean Norris. Chris Addison directs, with a script from Black Widow solo movie screenwriter Jac Schaeffer. While the basic premise here is the same as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the screenwriter says audiences should expect something completely fresh. "It seemed to me that it would be much more complicated for women to be separating men from their money since we weren't doing the gold-digger, sugar daddy scenario," Schaeffer said in an interview. "These women are smart, it was more conniving, and there are more theatrics than the original...the characters were reimagined and the dialogue is entirely new. There are one or two lines from the original film."

The Hustle opens May 10, 2019.