Yahoo Lifestyle Reba McEntire To Produce & Star In ‘The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion’ For Wonder Project; Callie Khouri Directing Book Adaptation
EXCLUSIVE: Wonder Project, the recently launched faith-based indie studio from Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten and Jon Erwin, has launched development on The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion, an adaptation of the New York Times bestselling novel by Fannie Flagg, to be produced by and star Country Music Hall of Fame member Reba McEntire.
Oscar winner Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louise) will direct from a script by Tony-nominated playwright and screenwriter Bekah Brunstetter (Maid), with McEntire being joined as producer by Jeremy Latcham for Wonder Project, as well as Khouri. Ben Howard and Erin Mae Miller will exec produce for Third Coast Content, with VP of Film Michael Musgrave overseeing the film for Wonder Project.
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Published in November 2013, The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion tells the story of Mrs. Sookie Poole of Point Clear, Alabama, who has just married off her daughter and is looking forward to relaxing. The only thing left to contend with is her domineering mother, the formidable 90-year-old Lenore Simmons Krackenberry, who is obsessed with family lineage and Southern heritage. But when Sookie receives a series of mysterious letters that suggest that she’s adopted, she gets sent down a rabbit hole of self-discovery, ultimately uncovering the swashbuckling story of Fritzi Jurdabralinski and her sisters, a daring group of women who ran the first All Girl Filling Station during WWII and ultimately became the first female Air Force pilots.
This is one of nearly a dozen novels from Flagg, who’s best known for 1987’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. She co-wrote the film adaptation, Fried Green Tomatoes, for Universal and earned Oscar and WGA Award nominations for her work. Most recently, she published The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop, a sequel to Fried Green Tomatoes, in 2020.
Stated McEntire, “I’ve always been a fan of Fannie Flagg and her writing, and it’s been an honor to call her my friend for the past decade. I cannot wait to work with this incredible team to bring another one of her special stories to life on the big screen.”
A Grammy-winning country artist who has sold upwards of 75 million records worldwide, as well as a Golden Globe-nominated actress known for the show Reba, McEntire currently stars on and exec produces NBC’s sitcom Happy’s Place and recently signed to return as a coach on NBC’s The Voice.
Khouri wrote the iconic Thelma & Louise, for which she won a Golden Globe, Writers Guild Award and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. She also created and exec produced the hit series Nashville, which ran for six seasons.
Brunstetter’s musical adaptation of The Notebook, written with Ingrid Michaelson, received three Tony nominations including Best Book of a Musical and is running on Broadway. As a TV writer/producer, she has worked on Switched at Birth, American Gods, This Is Us, and won a WGA Award for her work on Maid. Her play The Cake has been produced over 150 times, all over the world.
Established in 2023, Wonder Project’s upcoming projects include the biblical drama series House of David, coming to Prime Video on February 27, which marks the first project under a partnership with Amazon MGM Studios; Sarah’s Oil for Amazon MGM, which releases in theaters next Christmas; Flyer, a narrative feature in development about the Wright brothers and the invention of flight; The Breadwinner, currently in early development with Sony’s TriStar Pictures, which stars top stand-up Nate Bargatze; and It’s Not Like That, which recently landed a cast-contingent series order from Amazon MGM Studios.
McEntire, Brunstetter, Flagg, and Howard are all with WME. McEntire is also repped by Jackoway Austen; Khouri by UTA and Johnson Shapiro Slewett Kole; Brunstetter by The Shuman Company and Schreck Rose Dapello; and Latcham by Warren Dern and Kiley Wong at Sloane, Offer, Weber and Dern.
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