Weetzie Bat, Francesca Lia Block’s 1989 cult classic, will be adapted into a movie, reported Deadline yesterday.
The movie, which centers around a whimsical dream of a young girl finding friends, family, and love in 1980s Los Angeles, will star Thoroughbreds actor Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character alongside Nick Robinson, Sasha Lane, Theodore Pellerin, and Keiynan Lonsdale. Thor Bradwell, Justin Kelly, and Joshua Thurston will produce the film.
Block, who has since written over 25 books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including five stories about Weetzie and her friends, also wrote the screenplay.
Deadline released the following synopsis:
Weetzie (Taylor-Joy) is an ethereal pixie living in 1980s Los Angeles, where she grew up the child of an alcoholic starlet mother and a junkie screenwriter father. She teams up with her Mohawked best friend Dirk (Pellerin) to find love, leading her to mysterious trenchcoat-wearing filmmaker Max (Robinson) and platinum-haired surfer Duck (Lonsdale). But when their bliss is threatened by deaths, breakups and Max’s witchy and bitter ex-girlfriend Vixanne (Lane), Weetzie must take off her pink harlequin sunglasses in order to confront life’s darkness and find happiness in a city known as much for the glamour of fame and fortune as the darkness of cults and crime.
Top photo: Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (HarperCollins: 1989)
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Lydia Wang is a writer, a Pisces, and one of BUST's digital editors. Find her on Twitter or say hi: lydiaw@bust.com.
