You know what they say: Direct what you know. And Catherine Hardwicke knows YA adaptations. After all, she directed Twilight, arguably the biggest YA adaptation in recent history. So it shouldn’t really come to a surprise that Hardwicke is sticking with what she knows by directing the film adaptation of Jerry Spinelli’s bestselling YA novel Stargirl. Kristin Hahn, who most recently produced Jennifer Aniston’s Cake, will produce as well as pen the adaptation; Hahn helped Aniston and Brad Pitt found Plan B Entertainment, which lives on Aniston-less in the post-Brad/Jennifer Era.
“I am thrilled to have the chance to adapt this beloved novel and I can’t imagine anyone more uniquely equipped to bring this story to life than Catherine Hardwicke, a Stargirl in her own right,” Hahn said.
Stargirl, which came out in 2002, tells the story of a homeschooled teen who, as you might guess from the title, goes by the name of Stargirl. She enrolls in an Arizona high school, where she totally shakes things up by challenging the conformity of her peers through eccentric outfits and ukulele antics. In other words, she sounds a bit like a teenaged Jessica Day. (Manic Pixie Stargirl certainly has a nice ring to it.) Plans for a film adaptation have been in place since 2009, but they must have gotten buried under the avalanche of other YA adaptations. As for Hardwicke, she just wrapped production on Miss You Already, Lionsgate’s upcoming Drew Barrymore romantic comedy. But now she’s diving back into that pile of YA adaptations to take on a project that will hopefully have more life to it than the first Twilight installment.