Project Detail

How to Build A Girl

Synopsis

Johanna Morrigan is 16, smart, opinionated, brash, over-weight - not exactly the high school prom queen. She is also a virgin whose hormones are rioting like a zoo on fire. Although she loves her dysfunctional family, Johanna is desperate to get out and make a name for herself. And so she does, as Dolly Wilde, a bad-ass music critic at a hip magazine. In person, she rubs shoulders (and sometimes more...) with rock stars, while on paper, she tears them apart. As she slaughters her way to greater and greater success, the lines between Johanna Morrigan and Dolly Wilde begin to haze. Can she be an ‘enfant terrible’ and hold on to her family, her heroes and her heart? Johanna definitely figured out how to build a girl, but has she figured out which girl to build?
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Special Presentations - World premiere

Details

Year: 2019
Type of project: Features
Running time: 102 min
Director: Coky Giedroyc
Producer: Alison Owen, Debra Hayward
Executive Producer: Daniel Battsek, Ollie Madden, Sue Bruce-Smith, Tim Headington, Lia Buman, Zygi Kamasa, Emma Berkofsky, Caitlin Moran
Screenwriter: Caitlin Moran
Principal cast: Beanie Feldstein, Alfie Allen, Paddy Considine, Sarah Solemani, Chris O'Dowd, Emma Thompson

Genre

Woman Director Drama

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

A Monumental Pictures (UK) production with support from Film4 (UK), Tango Entertainment (US), BFI Locked Box Initiative (UK)

Monumental Pictures

Church Road
London
NW10 9PY

Film4

124 Horseferry Road
London
SW1P 2TX

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Sales Company

Protagonist Pictures

42 - 48 Great Portland Street
London
W1W 7NB

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The second feature from Stella Does Tricks director Coky Giedroyc, Women Talking Dirty charts the ups and downs in the relationship between two friends in Edinburgh: headstrong single mother Cora (Helena Bonham Carter) and shy but successful cartoonist Ellen (Gina McKee) who is struggling to support her no-good gambling husband. As they gamely deal with the vicissitudes of life, their friendship is tested but ultimately proves too strong to crumble. The film is based on the popular novel by Scottish author Isla Dewar, published in 1996, and marks the debut production from Elton John's Rocket Pictures, which acquired the rights to the novel and then brought on board Giedroyc on the strength of her previous film. Rocket then teamed up with Jean Doumanian, the New York-based producer best known for her collaborations with Woody Allen, in an Anglo-American co-production. The work-in-progress print was screened at last year's Toronto Film Festival, since when the film has been back into the cutting rooms for fine-tuning. It has just been completed. Meanwhile, Rocket Pictures is developing a number of features across the genres and budget ranges, including the partly-animated Just So series, in co-production with the Walt Disney Co, and So I Am Glad, an adaptation of another Scottish novel, this time by AL Kennedy, which will be co-produced and star husband and wife team Ed Harris and Amy Madigan.

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