Critically acclaimed British Director Coky Giedroyc, has begun production on HOW TO BUILD A GIRL; an adaptation by Caitlin Moran of her best selling, semi-autobiographical novel. The coming of age comedy is a Monumental Pictures film produced by Alison Owen and Debra Hayward. Film4 developed the project from the outset with Monumental Pictures and are co-financing the production with Tango. The executive producers are Daniel Battsek, Ollie Madden and Sue Bruce-Smith for Film4, Tim Headington and Lia Buman for Tango, Zygi Kamasa and Emma Berkofsky for Lionsgate and Caitlin Moran. HOW TO BUILD A GIRL is made with the support of BFI Locked Box Initiative; Lionsgate will distribute the film in the UK with Protagonist Pictures handling worldwide sales. Sara Curran brokered the deal for Monumental Pictures. The shoot will take place in the UK this July and August.
HOW TO BUILD A GIRL will star Beanie Feldstein (Lady Bird, Bad Neighbours 2) alongside Alfie Allen (‘Game of Thrones’, the upcoming Jojo Rabbit), Paddy Considine (Journeyman, Pride), Sarah Solemani (Bridget Jones’s Baby, ‘Him & Her’), Laurie Kynaston (England Is Mine, ‘Cradle to Grave’), Joanna Scanlan (Pin Cushion, Notes on a Scandal), Arinzé Kene (The Pass), Frank Dillane (In the Heart of the Sea), Tadhg Murphy (‘Guerrilla’) and Ziggy Heath (‘Spies of Warsaw’).
It’s 1993, and there’s only one way for a fat, bright, funny, working-class sixteen year old (Beanie Feldstein) to break out of her tiny, crowded house in Wolverhampton, and go on the somehow noble sex-quest she desires – to reinvent herself as swashbuckling, top-hat-wearing rock critic Dolly Wilde, and explode all over London. The only question is – was Dolly Wilde the right girl to build?
Alison Owen says “We are excited that Caitlin’s brilliant literary heroine is finally making it to the big screen, and can’t think of anybody more inspiring than Beanie to bring Caitlin’s exquisitely funny character to life.” Debra Hayward adds “We’ve been incredibly lucky to add Paddy Considine and Sarah Solemani, as Johanna’s ‘unconventional parents’, to our already stellar cast. And there are more surprises to come.”
Monumental Pictures is a film and television company launched in 2014 by Oscar-nominated and BAFTA winning producers Alison Owen and Debra Hayward. ITV Global Entertainment has a stake in their television shingle, Monumental Television. 2017 saw Hayward and Owen serve as Executive Producers on two series: ‘Harlots’, an eight-part returning series for ITV Encore and Hulu starring Samantha Morton, Lesley Manville and Jessica Brown Findlay, and created by Moira Buffini and Alison Newman, and ‘Anne With An E’ that saw Hayward and Owen team with Golden Globe-nominee and Emmy Award-winning ‘Breaking Bad’ alumni Moira Walley-Beckett, to adapt children’s classic, Anne of Green Gables. Alison Owen’s previous producing credits include Me Before You, Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks, The Other Boleyn Girl, Jane Eyre, Brick Lane and the seven times Emmy award winning ‘Temple Grandin’. Debra Hayward’s producing credits include Mary Queen Of Scots, Bridget Jones’s Baby and Les Misérables. Her Executive Producing credits include I Give It A Year, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Senna.
Coky Giedroyc is a British, critically acclaimed director most recently celebrated for her work on ‘Harlots’ written by Moira Buffini for Monumental Television, Hulu and ITV Encore. In 2016, she was awarded a BAFTA for best director for ‘The Sound of Music Live’, starring Kara Tointon, Julian Ovenden and Alexander Armstrong. Coky set up the award-winning, drama ‘The Hour’, written by Abi Morgan and starring Dominic West, Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe. She was nominated for an International Emmy Award for her work on the BAFTA nominated BBC Drama, ‘The Virgin Queen’. She has also directed multiple episodes of AMC’s ‘The Killing’ as well as ‘Penny Dreadful’ starring Eva Green and Rory Kinnear.
In 2017, alongside ‘Harlots’ Season Two, she directed on Veena Sud’s series ‘Seven Seconds’ for Fox 21/Netflix and two episodes of ‘Gypsy’ for NBCU/Netflix starring Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup. Her other credits include the four-part BBC1 series ‘What Remains’, written by Tony Basgallop, ‘Spies Of Warsaw’, an adaptation of Alan Furst’s novel and ‘Wuthering Heights’ starring Tom Hardy.
Caitlin Moran grew up on a council estate in Wolverhampton, where she was home educated, wore a poncho and had boys throw stones at her whilst calling her ‘a bummer’. She left school at eleven and, aged twelve won the Dillon’s essay competition. At the age of fifteen she wrote her first novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, which won her the Observer’s Young Reporter award. At age seventeen, she was writing for the Observer and the Guardian. By age eighteen she was given her own column in the Times, which became the most-read part of the paper, the satirical celebrity column ‘Celebrity Watch’. At the same time, she became co-presenter of a television programme, Naked City that launched upcoming bands such as Blur, Manic Street Preachers and the Boo Radleys.
Caitlin won the British Press Awards’ Columnist of The Year in 2010 and, in 2011, the BPA’s
Interviewer of the Year and Critic of the Year. Her bestselling memoir, How to be a Woman,
won the Galaxy National Book Awards Book of the Year, the Listener’s Choice category at
The Irish Book Awards and is published in twenty-five languages. Her novel, How to Build a
Girl, was published in July 2014 to critical acclaim, selling in over 25 territories to become an
International, number one bestseller.
Moranthology was published in 2015 and her collection of essays, Moranifesto, was published in 2017. Caitlin’s new book, How To Be Famous, has just come out and is number one in the UK charts.
