‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’: Read The Screenplay That (Finally) Got Judy Blume On The Big Screen

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Kelly Fremon Craig’s adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which marks the first time a book penned by YA icon Judy Blume has made it to the big screen.

Fremon Craig directed and wrote the screenplay and reteamed with producer James L. Brooks following their excellent 2016 teen dramatic comedy The Edge of Seventeen. Like that move, the trials and tribulations of a young girl coming of age take center stage.

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In Are You There God?, Abby Ryder Fortson plays the 11-year-old Margaret, who is uprooted from her life in New York City for the suburbs of New Jersey, slogging through the messy and tumultuous throes of puberty with new friends in a new school.

The pic that also stars Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates and Benie Safdie follows closely the plot of the book published in 1970, a daunting blueprint for Fremon Craig, who recounted at Deadline’s recent Contenders Film: Los Angeles that she sent a “love letter” to Blume telling her she wanted to adapt the book.

She also said writing the first draft left her “paralyzed.”

“I respect her so much,” Fremon Craig said. “And this is her legacy. So it felt really important to get it right. It started to shift for me, as soon as I mentally shifted to a place of if I can just deliver the spirit of the book, even as I’m making changes, then that will all have served her work.”

Blume later noted that the resulting “movie is better than the book.”

Lionsgate released the comedic family drama in April. It has grossed $21.4 million worldwide.

Click below to read the script.

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