It might be Jenna Ortega's lucky day: Baz Luhrmann is making a Joan of Arc movie

Someone needs to get Chappell Roan on the phone ASAP. What did she know, and when did she know it? Just six days ago, the ascendant star charged onto the VMA stage in full Joan of Arc regalia for a fiery performance of “Good Luck, Babe!” complete with flaming arrows and armored dancers. Now, Deadline has confirmed that Baz Luhrmann is working on a film about the teenage patron saint, who believed God had sent her to defend France from English domination in the Hundred Years’ War. 

Casting is going to be a war of its own. According to the trade, a notice went out today seeking a young female actor to star in “the ultimate teenage girl coming of age story, set in the Hundred Years’ War.” Luhrmann is clearly set on that tagline, because he teased the same quote in an Instagram video a few weeks ago. If the director really is trying to frame the story of a young woman who was wrongfully burned at the stake for blasphemy by cross-dressing as a quirky bildungsroman, that would be… a choice. Still, we don’t really know anything as of this writing other than the fact that Warner Bros. is on board to produce and Luhrmann is currently calling the film either Jehanne or Jehanne d’Arc.

If Luhrmann continues his patterns and, hypothetically, makes Jehanne into a musical, Roan could actually be the perfect choice to portray the young heroine; she certainly has the pipes. She’ll have to fight Jenna Ortega for it, though. The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actor recently told Letterboxd that Joan would be a “dream character” for her, raving about Renée Falconetti’s “absolutely insane” performance in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 movie The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, which she cited as one of her four favorite films. Even if neither of them land the lead, there’s something prophetic-feeling about this sudden confluence of references. Nothing could be more fitting for Joan.