Adam Shankman to Direct Kate Beckinsale In THE CHOCOLATE MONEY

Deadline reports that Adam Shankman will helm a big screen adaptation of Ashley Prentice Norton's popular novel THE CHOCOLATE MONEY. Kate Beckinsale, who is also co-writing the screenplay with Emma Forrest, is set to star. Filming on the project will get underway this spring in New York City.

Set in the Big Apple during the 1980's, the story centers on "the relationship between Babs Ballentyne, an impossibly rich chocolate heiress, and her precocious young daughter Bettina. Beckinsale plays Babs who is beautiful, whip-smart and lives a rock-star lifestyle. Her daughter Bettina, who is dazzled by her mother, constantly craves her attention. With her blurred view of reality, she fantasizes about normal family life and develops a crush on her mother's married lover, Mack. Some years later, Bettina enrolls in boarding school where she goes on a self-destructive spree, partying and behaving in ways which she thinks will catch her mother's attention. When Mack's teenage son becomes part of her new circle of friends and her mother unexpectedly turns up on campus, she wonders if she will be ever be able forge her own identity or simply doomed as her mother's daughter forever."

Among Shankman's other directing credits are Hairspray, A Walk To Remember and The Pacifier, as well as Disney's upcoming sequel Disenchanted, starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and James Marsden.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride

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