Director Miguel Arteta has come aboard Sorta Like a Rockstar, Fox Searchlight’s adaptation of the 2011 Matthew Quick YA book.
Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey of Temple Hill Entertainment, who have made a name for themselves in the YA sphere with The Fault in Our Stars and the Maze Runner movies, among numerous others, are producing Rockstar with the Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Lee Stollman.
Quick’s best-seller centers on an upbeat Catholic teen who, despite challenges in her life (like being homeless and living in a school bus driven by her single, alcoholic mother) is relentlessly positive. She teaches English as a second language, visits nursing homes and works with a reclusive veteran. But that optimism is put to the test when tragedy strikes and her mother is killed.
Ol Parker wrote the current screenplay.
Arteta’s pact is a development deal, meaning the helmer will work with the screenwriter on further drafts.
Arteta last directed the 2014 Disney movie Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, but the filmmaker is better known for his movies that skirt the dramatic and the quirky, such as Jennifer Aniston vehicle The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt, which starred Michael Cera.
Arteta, who is repped by WME, Management 360 and Lichter Grossman, also works in television and has directed episodes of The New Normal, Nurse Jackie and Six Feet Under.
