Seven years after directing the first film in the billion-dollar-grossing “Twilight” franchise, Catherine Hardwicke is in talks to direct another YA phenomenon, Ava Dellaira’s “Love Letters to the Dead” for Fox 2000 and Temple Hill Entertainment, an individual with knowledge of the deal told TheWrap.
Dellaira adapted her own debut novel, which was published in April 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers. The story follows a teenage girl named Laurel who’s assigned to write a letter to a dead person for her English class. She chooses her late sister’s favorite musician, Kurt Cobain, who also died young. Inspired by the cathartic assignment, she sets out to fill a notebook with letters to dead celebrities such as Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, Judy Garland and Amelia Earhart, among others. The letters help Laurel process her feelings and grief surrounding her older sister’s sudden and mysterious death.
Temple Hill’s Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen, who worked with Hardwicke on “Twilight,” are producing the movie coming off their recent YA hits “The Fault In Our Stars” and “The Maze Runner.” Fox 2000 executives Elizabeth Gabler and Erin Siminoff will oversee the project for the studio.
A graduate of the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop that was depicted on HBO’s “Girls,” Dellaira was encouraged to write “Love Letters to the Dead” by Stephen Chbosky, the author of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” Last year, Vanity Fair named “Love Letters” one of 10 new novels that could fuel the teen-movie comeback.
In addition to having experience spinning hits out of popular YA novels like “Twilight,” Hardwicke also directed the female-driven drama “Thirteen” and most recently wrapped the indie “Miss You Already,” which stars Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette. She’s represented by CAA, Manage-ment and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.