Catherine Hardwicke To Direct ‘The Bitch Posse’

For a moment there, we thought we lost director Catherine Hardwicke to the tentpole world. She made a smash success out of vampire/human romance with “Twilight,” teamed up with Warner Bros. for the egregious “Red Riding Hood” (which this writer already places on the Worst Of The Year list) and late last year, she signed on for another tween blockbuster, “The Maze Runner.” But it looks like she’s ready to get her hands dirty again.

Deadline reports that Hardwicke will direct the provocatively named “The Bitch Posse.” Based on the book by Martha O’Connor, the film centers “on three friends, Cherry, Amy and Rennie, high school seniors who come from troubled homes and form a dangerous alliance called the Bitch Posse. Something occurs that rips apart the friendship and haunts them into adulthood. The book switches back and forth from those high school years to their adult lives where one is in a mental institution, the other is a promiscuous writer and the third suffers through a loveless marriage.” Sounds like the perfect sort of material to get Hardwicke back into the “Thirteen“/”Lords Of Dogtown” mode that she made her name on.

No word yet on which film will go first for Hardwicke, but this one seems to have the freshest movement at the moment. Back in January, Noah Oppenheim was brought on to pen “The Maze Runner” but not much has been heard since. But we’re definitely up for Hardwicke stepping back from overwrought tween fare and tackling something a bit more meaty. Here’s the synopsis of the book from Amazon:

“You Have Now Entered a Chick-Lit-Free Zone,” O’Connor’s dark, scabrous debut warns. Given the sassy title and the familiar subject matter of female friendship, readers should be forgiven if they expect Bridget Jones—but O’Conner’s heroines resemble that lovable Brit like leopards resemble kittens. The story focuses on three friends, Cherry, Amy and Rennie, as high school seniors and as women in their mid-30s. Compelled by miserable home lives to form the Bitch Posse as teenagers, the three girls ricochet dangerously through their last year of high school, sharing a passionate, almost sinister bond until a terrible secret rips them apart. Still damaged—and separated—by the unspeakable event, the three live equally wretched lives as adults, Cherry in a mental institution, Rennie as a promiscuous failed writer and Amy in a loveless marriage. After pages of vodka, cocaine, “fucking” and “cutting” (in both past and present narratives), the friends’ terrible secret finally comes to light, though it reveals logistical and thematic gaps in the narrative. “[H]er past is like a sore that won’t ever heal, memories are spurting at her like blood and she can’t close the wound” characterizes the level of emotional complexity attained in this heavy-handed novel, but the story fascinates even as it repels.