Actress and director Meg Ryan has found her latest project — a film version of the popular novel A Lady’s Guide To Selling Out for Netflix.
The book, by Sally Franson, tells the story of Casey Pendergast, who’s a “praise-seeking missile who navigates a tricky Twenty First Century career and the even trickier question of who she wants to be,” according to Deadline.
This is Ryan’s second directorial venture after 2015’s Ithaca, which she also starred in. Ryan is well known for the movies When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks in the 90s.
She intentionally stepped back from acting because she felt “burnt out,” she said in an interview with The New York Times.
“I was burned out. I didn’t feel like I knew enough anymore about myself or the world to reflect it as an actor. I felt isolated,” she said. She also felt like she didn’t have time to grow because she got famous so young.
“I’m not complaining — there are so many advantages to being famous — but there are fundamental disadvantages for a part of your brain, your self, your soul. My experiences were too limited.”
Jenny Rachel Weiner is writing the script for A Lady’s Guide To Selling Out and Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff are producing it. Weiner is an in demand Hollywood writer who’s also developing a show for Amazon about a play she wrote with Lee Overtree. She’s also working on a show for Hulu produced by Prentice Penny.
A Lady’s Guide To Selling Out was published by Random House Books, which describes it as a story of a “woman untangling the contradictions of our era”.
“Told in an unforgettable voice, with razor-sharp observations about everything from feminism to pop culture to social media, A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out is the story of a young woman untangling the contradictions of our era and trying to escape the rat race—by any means necessary.”
Ryan’s adaptation of A Lady’s Guide To Selling Out has no release date as of yet.
