The Shaggs get a biopic -

[Henry Bemis]

Per The Hollywood Reporter:

Elsie Fisher has booked her first starring role since breaking out in Bo Burnham's indie Eighth Grade.

Fisher will star in The Shaggs, a musical feature that is based on the real-life story of the Wiggin sisters, three musically inept teenagers from new Hampshire who, in 1968, recorded one of the most infamous rock-and-roll albums of all time, Philosophy of the World.

Ken Kwapis, whose feature credits include The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and A Walk in the Woods, will direct from a screenplay by Joy Gregory. Inspired by a 1999 New Yorker article by Susan Orlean, Gregory had previously turned the story of The Shaggs into an off-Broadway stage musical.

The original album, for the unenlightened:

Off-Broadway musical cast recording, for what they're working with:

 

[MG 620]

I love their music. This is what lolcows did before tumblr.

 

[Gordon Cole]

Dammit, I wanted to make a Shaggs movie.

 

[Winnie the Poohnani]

I hope they don't try to portray it as the usual cliched hollywood "inspirational" arc. From what has come out after the fact in interviews with Dot Wiggins, etc., it seems like the sisters weren't very happy about being pushed into a musical "career", and there was some abuse on the part of the dad. I don't think any of them ever really recovered from it.

It would suck if it was sold as a "these young girls proved you can achieve your dreams" when the actuality was considerably darker.

 

[Henry Bemis]

I hope they don't try to portray it as the usual cliched hollywood "inspirational" arc. From what has come out after the fact in interviews with Dot Wiggins, etc., it seems like the sisters weren't very happy about being pushed into a musical "career", and there was some abuse on the part of the dad. I don't think any of them ever really recovered from it.

It would suck if it was sold as a "these young girls proved you can achieve your dreams" when the actuality was considerably darker.

If Joy Gregory is truly using her stage musical as a basis for adaptation, this will not be a problem. That show is as sad and unresolved as it is fascinating.

 

[Alberto Balsalm]

I hope it turns out well. The Shaggs are great. They're the rare outsider figures who are truly, completely innocuous; it's hard not to feel sympathy for them.

 

[Gordon Cole]

I hope it turns out well. The Shaggs are great. They're the rare outsider figures who are truly, completely innocuous; it's hard not to feel sympathy for them.

I just hope that we'll get more outsider music biopics. I can't be the only one who'd pay to see a Daniel Johnston or Wesley Willis movie.

(And yes, I know there are already documentaries about the both of them.)