EXCLUSIVE: BAFTA winner Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd) has been set to direct and stars in The Semplica Girl Diaries, written by Ayoade and Booker Prize-winning author George Saunders.
Ayoade and Lydia Fox (The Souvenir 1 & 2) will lead cast and we hear from sources in the market that there are early talks with A-list U.S. and UK talent including Ben Stiller, Jesse Eisenberg and Sally Hawkins. None are signed on yet.
Adapted from the story of the same name, which was originally published in The New Yorker, the film is set in a near-future world in which real-life ‘Semplica Girls’ are imported from impoverished countries across the globe to serve as decorative items for the wealthy.
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The movie is a House Productions / Alcove Entertainment production and is produced by Tessa Ross and Juliette Howell (The Wonder), and Robin C. Fox and Amina Dasmal (The Double). The film was developed by Tessa Ross for House Productions and Robin C. Fox for Alcove Entertainment with Access Entertainment.
Film4 will executive-produce and co-finance. Len Blavatnik and Danny Cohen will be executive-producing for Access Entertainment.
Here’s a full synopsis: “Family man Lloyd Turner (Ayoade) is facing up to his 40th birthday with the prospect of a new decade mouldering in debt and mediocrity. After attending yet another party hosted by the rich parents of his daughter’s friend, and in a bid to give his daughters the happiness he thinks they deserve, Lloyd and his wife Sarah (Fox) makes the financially crippling decision to invest in what has become the elite’s new favourite status symbol: a set of ‘Semplica Girls’ to decorate their front lawn. Yet when Lloyd’s youngest daughter, Ida, discovers what’s happening in her name, on her very own doorstep, she threatens to plunge her family into a chaos deeper than they’ve ever known…”
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