Fans of Reese Witherspoon's last project, the Monterey-set, real-estate porn series known as Big Little Lies are in for a case of whiplash.
Deadline reports that Witherspoon's latest gig is about as far from the glam world of seaside California towns as it gets. She'll be putting on her producer's hat once more for This Above All, a biopic about Megan Phelps-Roper, whose grandfather founded the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.
The film is set to be based on Phelps-Roper's upcoming as-yet-untitled memoir and "Unfollow," a New Yorker article written by Adrian Chen and published in November 2015.
Most people know the Westboro Baptist Church for its continued picketing at events generally seen as national tragedies, such as mass shootings, LGBTQ events, and military funerals. However, the film won't focus on the church, its vociferous mobs, or the controversies that come with its actions. Instead, the Witherspoon-produced flick is set to shed light on Phelps-Roper's own story, which includes her picketing at age 5, later handling the church's social media presence, and her eventual decision to leave the church and embrace a new life of "inclusiveness, empathy, humanity, and love."
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After she decided to leave the church, Phelps-Roper and her sister were disowned by their family and moved to Los Angeles, where they were taken in by a Hasidic Jewish family.
During a Ted Talk, Phelps-Roper described her time at Westboro as "framed as an epic spiritual battle between good and evil. The good was my church and its members and the evil was everyone else."
Marc Webb, known for the Andrew Garfield-fronted Spider-Man films, is set to direct.
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