Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley Drama ‘My Salinger Year’ Sold to IFC Films (EXCLUSIVE)

By Dave McNary

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to “My Salinger Year” a drama starring Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley.

Falardeau adapted “My Salinger Year” from Joanna Rakoff’s memoir of the same name. The film is set in New York City in the 1990s after Qualley’s character leaves graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a writer and gets hired as an assistant to Weaver’s stoic and old-fashioned literary agent of J. D. Salinger.

The assistant spends her days in a plush office where dictaphones and typewriters still reign  and her nights in a sink-less Brooklyn apartment with her socialist boyfriend. Her main task is processing Salinger’s fan mail, but as she reads the heart-wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency’s impersonal standard letter and impulsively begins personalizing the responses.

“My Salinger Year,” directed by Philippe Falardeau, opened the 70th Berlin Film Festival in February. Luc Déry and Kim McCraw of Mirco_scope produced the film, which was co-produced by Ruth Coady and Susan Mullen of Parallel Films in association with Memento Films International and La Cinéfacture.

“We look forward to collaborating with Phillippe once again, this time on the adaptation of a highly acclaimed memoir and an authentic New York story brought to life by excellent performances from breakout Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver,” said Arianna Bocco, IFC’s executive VP of acquisitions and productions.

The deal for the film was negotiated by Bocco with UTA Independent Film Group and Memento Films International on behalf of the filmmakers.