It’s been a while since Whit Stillman actually stepped behind a camera – his last produced feature was 1998’s The Last Days Of Disco. But now, after years of projects stomping through development hell only to vanish into nothing, it looks like he’s finally going to get something new made with “ultra-low-budget” comedy Damsels In Distress.
"It's a college comedy," Stillman tells Variety. "It's about four stylish, perfume-obsessed college girls who revolutionize the social life at their grungy university. There are no names, but at our budget level it doesn't have to be a name cast.” Which might be how he’s managed to get this one moving closer to production than anything he’s been attached to before now.
Back in 2006, he was lining up an adaptation of Thank You For Smoking author Christopher Buckley’s political farce Little Green Men, which would have seen a talk radio host abducted from a golf course after grilling the president about the space programme. But despite high hopes, it never actually managed to beam itself into cinemas.
Stillman also has Jamaican gospel drama Dancing Mood in development, but it now looks like Damsels will be his top priority, with casting underway and locations picked out for a shoot set to begin in August. Fingers crossed he has more luck this time…