Starbucks' Next Step In Hollywood Strategy: Bribe Meryl Streep To Read
For any parents who have grown weary of fulfilling family quality time commitments by begrudgingly accompanying your kids to movies starring smart-alecky, CGI woodland creatures, Starbucks introduces a brand new way to phone in your love: by having Meryl Streep read to your kids for you, on audiobooks you can conveniently pick up while grabbing your daily latte:
Meryl Streep is narrating a pair of children's classics, "The Velveteen Rabbit" and "The Night Before Christmas," that will be released later this year as audiobooks at Starbucks coffeehouses. [...]
After an initial four-month run at Starbucks, Random House Inc.'s Listening Library will give the recordings a general release.
With their last Hollywood tie-in, Lionsgate's Akeelah and the Bee, having underperformed at the box office, Starbucks is turning to the much safer terrain of time-tested material. Should the children's audiobooks prove to be best sellers, look for the coffee chain to expand their series of "America's most celebrated actors reading books kids already love" to include such titles as Al Pacino is Thumbelina and Sean Penn's gripping reimagining of The Steadfast Tin Soldier as a thinly veiled anti-Iraq war allegory.
