BWW Previews: Kristin Hannah's Best Selling Novel THE NIGHTINGALE Announces that Sisters Dakota and Elle Fanning Will Star in Movie Adaptation

Kristin Hannah's #1 New York Times Best Selling World War II Novel THE NIGHTINGALE is heading to the silver screen -- and it just cast its leading ladies.

Actress Dakota Fanning (The Alienist, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, The Secret Life of Bees) has grown up in front of the public eye. She got her big break starring in the movie I Am Sam, and at age 8, was the youngest actor to be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award. Her younger sister, Elle Fanning (Super 8, Maleficent, Mary Shelley), made her acting debut in I Am Sam playing a younger version of Dakota's character and has since gone on to carve her own career in the industry.

While the sisters have played alternate versions of the same character on-screen, they've never shared the screen together as intersecting characters. They've been waiting for the perfect project to bring them together, and found it in Kristin Hannah's timeless tale of two sisters during the height of war.

The Nightingale takes place during World War II in Nazi-occupied France, and explores the homefront and the women who must survive and keep everything together while the men are away fighting. The novel is at gut-wrenching and impactful, and leads a lasting impression on its readers. The movie adaptation hopes to do the same for a new audience.

The film is coming from TriFilm Studios, helmed by producer Elizabeth Cantillon (Charlie's Angels 2019, The Girl in the Spider's Web), screenwriter Dana Stevens (Safe Haven, City of Angels) and director Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds, Beginners), who is also an actress and screenwriter. Laurent has previously worked with Elle Fanning on Galveston.

The rest of the cast has yet to be announced, and the film is still in pre-production. BroadwayWorld Books will keep you informed as the project continues to develop.

ABOUT THE NIGHTINGALE:

In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are.

France, 1939
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child's life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.

Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.