How to Build a Girl will start shooting in summer with Beanie Feldstein

How to Build a Girl, based on the best-selling Caitlin Moran novel, will start shooting in summer with Beanie Feldstein (recently seen in Greta Gerwig’s award-winning movie Lady Bird) confirmed to play the lead role of Johanna Morrigan.

Also confirmed for the project is Coky Giedroyc, whose TV credits include episodes of The Killing, The Hour, The Sound of Music Live, Harlots, and Good Behaviour, and who will be directing from a screenplay by Caitlin Moran.

It’s 1990. Johanna Morrigan is sixteen, smart, opinionated and overweight. Hormones raging, she is desperate to get out of her home town and make a name for herself – which she does, reinventing herself as Dolly Wilde, bad-ass music critic. Gaining notoriety as an enfant terrible, she has finally figured out how to build a girl – but is this the girl she wanted to build?

The producers describe the lead character as “one of the great female literary icons” on a par with Elizabeth Bennet and Bridget Jones.

Monumental Pictures developed the project with Film4, who also co-finance the film alongside US financier Tango Entertainment. The comedic coming-of-age story will shoot in July on location in the UK. Worldwide sales will be handled by Protagonist Pictures.

Oscar-nominated duo Alison Owen (whose extensive list of credits includes Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks, The Other Boleyn Girl, Suffragette) and Debra Hayward (Les Miserables, Mary Queen of Scots, Bridget Jones’s Baby) will produce.