Having apparently given up entirely on the Hamlet adaptation that fell apart last fall, Catherine Hardwicke is dusting herself off from the box office failure of Red Riding Hood to pick her next project. According to Deadline she'll be directing an adaptation of Martha O'Connor's novel The Bitch Posse, about three high school friends and an event that changes their lives and turns them into dysfunctional adults. The novel switches time periods between their high schools years and adulthood, when one is in a mental institution, one is a writer with commitment issues, and one is trapped in a loveless marriage.

Tristine Skyler adapted the screenplay from the novel, which apparently doesn't reveal the terrible secret at its center until near the end, and includes choice lines of dialogue like ""[H]er past is like a sore that won't ever heal, memories are spurting at her like blood and she can't close the wound." Sounds pretty much right for Hardwicke, who explored teen angst beautifully in Thirteen and brought out plenty more of it in the first Twilight film. Red Riding Hood actually wasn't as big a disaster as the dismal box office might have you believe-- it was goofy, yes, but with some interesting stuff in there-- so maybe by returning to a period setting and an established story Hardwicke might be able to bring out more of the skill that's made her such an interesting director to begin with. There are so few good movies about teen girls, period, that we have to hope to hang on to one of the few directors who's ever been able to get it right.