The Witch and Split star Anya Taylor-Joy has been cast as the title character in Weetzie Bat, an upcoming film adaptation of Francesa Lia Block’s cult 80s novel, where she will star alongside Nick Robinson (Love, Simon), Sasha Lane (American Honey), Theodore Pellerin (Boy Erased) and Keiynan Lonsdale (The Flash).
Justin Kelly (I Am Michael) is directing the movie from a script by Block, with Deadline reporting that the film will follow Weetzie (Taylor-Joy), “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.”
Taylor-Joy has recently wrapped filming on M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable and Split sequel Glass, which is set for release in January 2019, and also has Fox’s delayed X-Men spinoff The New Mutants incoming next year (assuming there are no further delays, given that the film has already been pushed back some 16 months from its original date).
