Kate Beckinsale Joins Adam Shankman’s The Chocolate Money

Ashley Prentice’s bestselling novel, The Chocolate Money is set to make its way onto the big screen in the near future. Kate Beckinsale has signed on to star in and produce the forthcoming adaptation, which centers on an impossibly rich chocolate heiress and her precocious young daughter, while Adam Shankman (Hairspray) has boarded as the film’s director. Production is set to begin later this spring.

The announcement arrives ahead of the Berlin Film Festival, which begins February 9 and is where producers try to sell their upcoming productions to curious investors. Beckinsale will be joined by fellow producers Mar-Key Pictures’ president Leslie Urdang, Miranda Pencier and Kelly E. Ashton (which is not my mother, even though they share the same name) on the upcoming project. Novelist Emma Forrest, meanwhile, wrote the screenplay for the new film.

Here’s what Urdang told THR:

Emma Forrest wrote a profoundly witty and moving script with a role that could easily become Kate Beckinsale’s most brilliant and memorable. Adam Shankman’s emotional accessibility and his gorgeous style will create a world we will not be able to resist.

The Chocolate Money centers on Bettina Ballentyne, the smart and beautiful daughter of millionaire chocolate heiress Babs Ballentyne (Beckinsale, one presumes). When a fling with her mother’s married lover quickly takes a sour turn, Bettina is sent off to boarding school, where she’s offered the chance to start fresh and anew — at least, that is before she discovers her previous lover’s teenage son joining her circle of new friends. Drama ensues from there.

More details should come to light as the festival draws closer, but in the meantime, one’s left to wonder the state of Disenchanted, the long-awaited Enchanted sequel which Shankman found himself attached to just four months ago. It’s obviously in some form of limbo if the director is jumping onto another project, but hopefully it hasn’t been shelved.