Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner Toni Collette (Knives Out) is finally gearing up to step into the director’s chair as she has signed on to helm a feature adaptation of Lily King’s New York Times bestselling novel Writers and Lovers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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Published just last week, King’s novel centers on Casey Peabody, an aspiring but unemployed novelist who is blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair and heads to Massachusetts in Summer 1997. A former child golf prodigy still holding on to the determination to live a creative life, Casey is waiting tables in Harvard Square and falls for two very different men at the same time, seeing her world become all the more complicated.
Click here to purchase King’s bestselling novel!
“I have been wanting to direct for quite some time but have been a bit busy with my day job,” Collette said in a statement. “l couldn’t be more thrilled to be bringing Lily King’s beautiful, funny, moving novel to filmic life. It’s an empowering story that speaks to me as a woman and an artist. It’s ultimately about coming to know and believe in oneself. This is not always an easy feat, but the most important journey any person can take. It inspires me on so many levels.”
In addition to helming the film, the Hereditary and Knives Out star is set to pen the script alongside Nick Payne (Wanderlust, The Crown) and produce the project via her Vocab Films production banner alongside Susannah Grant and Sarah Timberman, while Topic Studios’ Michael Bloom, Maria Zuckerman and Ryan Heller are all attached to executive produce.
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Topic Studios, the label behind the Jodie Foster-starring Golden Globe-nominated legal drama The Mauritanian, is primarily backing the adaptation.
(Photo Credit: Timothy Norris/Getty Images)
