Billie Eilish in Talks to Star in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

First Wuthering Heights, now The Bell Jar. Billie Eilish is in talks to star as Esther Greenwood in a film adaptation of Sylvia Plath's literary masterpiece, Deadline reports. The classic 1963 novel was originally published under a pseudonym just a month before Plath’s death by suicide at age 30. Its themes of depression and mental illness mirrored the struggles of Plath, and it was the only novel that the American writer and poet published. The story has been adapted for the big screen once, in 1979, with several later reworkings ultimately falling through.

Here’s everything we know about the Billie Eilish-starring The Bell Jar movie so far:

There’s an Oscar-winning director attached to The Bell Jar.

Canadian filmmaker, actor, writer, and producer Sarah Polley will be directing the film. The last novel she adapted for the screen—2022’s Women Talking, based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews—earned her the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The film would mark Billie Eilish’s movie acting debut.

Eilish is already a two-time Oscar winner, having co-written original songs for Barbie and No Time to Die with her brother, Finneas. She’s also been on TV, making her acting debut in Donald Glover’s Swarm series about an obsessed fan, a role which earned her the People’s Choice Award for TV performance of the year and an Independent Spirit Award nod for best supporting performance in a new scripted series. She’s also co-directing her upcoming concert tour documentary with James Cameron.

Still, The Bell Jar would mark her film acting debut and her first leading role. Given the themes she’s best known for writing about as a ten-time Grammy winner—including and especially mental health and depression—it does seem fitting.

Many The Bell Jar adaptations have come—and gone.

In 1979, Marilyn Hassett starred as Esther Greenwood in director Larry Peerce’s adaptation of The Bell Jar, though it wasn’t faithful to the source material. Other than that, there have been a few notable attempts at bringing the novel to the screen that ultimately fell through: Julia Styles was attached to star in and produce the story in 2007, but eventually let the movie rights expire due to not having funding (Rose McGowan would’ve played Esther’s psychiatrist). In 2016, it was announced that Kirsten Dunst would make her directorial debut with a Dakota Fanning-starring adaptation, but by 2019, both actors had backed out. Later that year, a Showtime limited TV series starring Frankie Shaw was meant to replace Dunst’s version, but that project, too, was eventually scrapped. In fact, Hollywood’s last major Path-related project came in 2003 when Gwyneth Paltrow played the writer in Sylvia.

A refresher on The Bell Jar:

The Bell Jar is Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel about Esther Greenwood, a young woman in the 1950s who takes an internship at a magazine in New York as her mental illness deteriorates. The poetic book details with stark clarity Greenwood’s descent into deep clinical depression and her subsequent treatment at a psychiatric hospital. The landmark novel explored how restrictive societies treat women, a theme that Plath dealt with in her other poems and short stories, and in her own life as a mother of two, married to fellow a fellow artist, the British writer and Poet Laureate Ted Hughes.

The novel was an instant bestseller upon its release in the UK and US in 1963 and is often referenced in popular culture. It contains the famous fig tree passage, which showed up in peak Millennial series Master of None and later as a TikTok trend for the Zoomer generation.