Adapting writer Neil Gaiman's work can be a tough task – and adapting one of his shortest stories into a full-length film sounds like a Herculean challenge. But it's one that Hedwig And The Angry Inch/Rabbit Hole director John Cameron Mitchell has accepted, recruiting Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning for How To Talk To Girls At Parties, which has premiered at Cannes and has its first images online.
The setting is Croydon in 1977, where Henry, AKA Enn (Alex Sharp) and friends John and Vic are looking to swap mundane suburban Silver Jubilee celebrations for a night on the wilder side.
Obsessed with the punk scene and looking to score the respect of local music matriarch Boadicea (Kidman), the trio decide to gatecrash a party she's throwing, but aren't quite prepared for what they find within... While the place is thronged with impossibly beautiful teenage students, something isn't quite right about them, even if Vic chalks it up to them being "Americans".
But as Enn discovers when he forges a connection with the mysterious and lovely Zan (Fanning), who identifies him as a fellow outsider, he learns that the visitors are from a little further than they thought...
With Ruth Wilson, Matt Lucas, Ethan Lawrence and A.J. Lewis also in the cast, How To Talk To Girls At Parties should hit UK cinemas later this year.