Diablo Cody has got the big mo going. Mandate Pictures will finance, develop and handle worldwide distribution rights for JUNO, the screenwriting debut of Minneapolis-based writer. JUNO is the story of a unique teenage girl forced to make difficult, bizarre and sometimes humorous decisions regarding an unplanned pregnancy by promising the unborn child to a troubled couple.
Creative executive Jim Miller brought the dark comedy JUNO into Mandate and will oversee its development. Mandate is currently in production on Mark Forster's STRANGER THAN FICTION staring Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Wes Craven's RED EYE. Mason Novick, producer of RED EYE is credited with discovering Cody after reading her internet blog. Novick will produce JUNO while Mandate's Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane will executive produce.
Cody is a blogger who maintained a frank and open running journal titled Pussy Ranch while working as a stripper in Minneapolis clubs and phone sex operator. She has written a manuscript called "Candy Girl" that will be published next year by Gotham. In the past year, Cody was hired to write for City Pages where she assumed the title of TV critic. Her blog Pussy Ranch has become part of the City Pages blogshere.
In a recent post on Cody's blog, she characterized her blog jottings in these words, "I know you visit the Pussy Ranch because you've come to rely on me for sick, offensive content, gratuitious use of the word 'cunt'..." and vamp Iowan succeeds in turn to wily entertain her audience with bawdiness and shock. Yet, Cody also exudes a quick and caustic wit and a keen eye for unusual repartee that makes her self-revealing blog nakedly stand out from the millions like her on the internet.
A two picture deal with Warner Bros. Pictures (WB) followed, the first 'Untitled Cody Drama" carries the log line "...centers on a group of twentysomethings at the crossroads of their lives." Does that tag sound vaguely familiar and bromidic? The two script WB deal includes a second blind script.
In an July 8th interview with City Pages writer Dylan Hicks, Cody stated, "The best part about Hollywood is that they pay you to be vague."
Well, let's just say they pay Diablo... kick it girl!
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3 comments:
She was smart to get a multi-picture deal before people actually read this book. Oh my god, it was some painful garbage. I hope she takes a dialogue class or something
Two months after the above comment, David Letterman read her book and evidently held a very different opinion, as she was invited onto the show to promote it. After her appearance, her book rose as high as the the 70's on Amazon's top 100 sellers.
As for her first screenplay, Juno, it's got very good buzz in Hollywood. See this Entertainment Weekly article.
Saw Diablo on Letterman and she was... solicituous... and I'm not sure that Letterman is the best of literary critics under these circumstances. He was mainly drawn to the sexual nature of her "act of reporting" which was to become a stripper, engaged in bed dancing, etc. all as a means of deep research (pardon the pun).
JUNO certainly has gotten press of the hot read in Hollywood, alhtough the deescriptions of the script are a bit uninteresting. In particular, JUNO is being billed as Hollywood's answer to NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. Dreadful... No dount Diablo Cody or Brook is a real manipulator of public opinion by dangling the scandelous meat before swine.
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