It seems Mamma Mia! star Amanda Seyfried is about to turn conwoman, as according to a Production Weekly tweet, “Amanda Seyfried & McG are attached to Lorene Scafaria’s pitch based on the Rolling Stone article ‘The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League’.”
As you might have guessed from the article title, the film is about a woman who wants an education even though she isn’t all she appears. /Film dug out the Rolling Stone article and reported that in the true-life tale it focussed on, “Esther Reed steals a series of identities, eventually becoming Brooke Henson and getting admitted to Columbia University under false pretenses, not to mention a false identity. Detectives looking for the real Brooke Henson, who was a missing person, track the fake Brooke down but before they can nab her, she hits the road and vanishes. At this point, police detective Jon Campbell takes on the hunt as easily his biggest case to date, and the chase is on.”
Lorene Scarfaria is the writer of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and one of Hollywood’s growing band of hip, female writers, so she may have a new take on the story of someone conning their way to the top that will make it a bit more interesting than the usual rise and fall tale.
However while it seems Terminator: Salvation’s McG is currently attached to direct the film, that doesn’t mean he’ll actually make it. He’s one of those directors who likes to have loads of projects bubbling at once, before dropping the vast majority and only picking one or two to actually make. IMDB currently lists him as having 14 films in pre-production, so don’t be shocked if The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League eventually gets made by someone else (which considering McG’s track record, wouldn’t necessatily be a bad thing).