The first trailer for Lionsgate’s adaptation of Judy Blume’s beloved young adult classic Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret dropped on Thursday.
Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates and Benny Safdie star along with newcomer Abby Ryder Fortson in the big-screen take, written and directed by Edge of Seventeen helmer Kelly Fremon Craig. In the two-minute look at the 1970s-set film, Fortson portrays 11-year-old Margaret, uprooted from her New York City home where she’s close to her grandmother, Sylvia (Kathy Bates), and moved to the New Jersey suburbs by her parents, played by McAdams and Safdie.
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It’s a tricky adjustment that sees Margaret having to quickly make new friends at a new school — an endeavor that becomes even more complicated by the fact that she’s “going through the messy and tumultuous throes of puberty,” according to the film’s loglines. It’s an awkwardly relatable experience captured through the trailer’s teases of bra and tampon-shopping, first kisses (and shaves), peer pressure and a school health class where Margaret and her friends learn a lesson about their “changing bodies.”
“Please, just do this one thing for me,” Margaret can be heard saying in voiceover. “Just let me be normal and regular like everybody else.”
All the while, Margaret’s mom, Barbara, is going through an adjustment of her own in their new home with a mother who isn’t happy her daughter moved away and is careful to remind her every chance she gets. “And how are you?” Bates’ character asks McAdams’ over a phone call. “I read that when you don’t have any loved ones around, your life expectancy drops drastically.”
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last year, McAdams noted that while she didn’t have an attachment to the book when she was growing up, “it was really nice to come to it later in life as a mom because I was playing the mother character and was viewing it through that lens.”
“It was interesting to read it all these years later and feel how relevant it was and how funny it still is,” she added.
The actress also explained how Margaret’s mother Barbara has an expanded role in the film, adding that she “felt like Kelly [Fremon Craig] drew a mother that was on a parallel journey with her daughter and trying to be a mom, but also be a person.”
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is produced by Gracie Films’ James L. Brooks, Blume, Craig, Julie Ansell, Richard Sakai, Amy Lorraine Brooks and Aldric La’auli Porter, with Jonathan McCoy executive producing. The movie is set to hit theaters on April 28.
