Winter’s Bone stirred up a lot of attention in 2010, thanks to Jennifer Lawrence’s compelling central performance as a young girl fighting for her family.
Now, the director of that movie is preparing to bring another strong-willed young woman to the big screen with a new version of Pippi Longstocking .
Debra Granik is currently working on a treatment for the movie, which will follow the nine-year-old Pippi – an assertive young thing whose antics seek to show adults how stupid they are.
“As a kid, I got really envious of men’s coming of age in movies,” says Granik.
“Their knowledge of darkness would grow, their compassion would grow, whatever it was, it felt like they would gain something, and the female coming of age often was punitive, like an unwanted pregnancy. We’re all like, ‘Oh God, I’m so glad I’m not her.’”
Adds the filmmaker: “People are finding these heroines charismatic, unexpected and fresh.
“What a person in the business can get from that is, ‘Hey, a young female protagonist doesn’t need to have a boyfriend, get pregnant, cut herself or be naked to attract an audience.’”
We wonder if Granik will take a leaf out of David Fincher’s book and set her film in Sweden, where the original book was imported from.
