Sweet Valley High

guardian.co.uk Wednesday 23 September 2009 12.24 BST


Diablo Cody to tackle Sweet Valley High

Juno writer to script film adaptation of the long-running book series about a pair of beautiful identical twins and their high-school exploits

Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar for her smart screenplay to Juno, is attached to write a big-screen adaptation of Sweet Valley High, the long-running series of teen-oriented books which was also made into a TV show.



The books centred on the lives of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, who live in the fictional town of Sweet Valley, California, and attend the local high school. More than 150 titles were published featuring Jessica, the more flighty of the sisters, and Elizabeth, the practical one, who usually had to save the day when one of her sibling's fanciful schemes went awry.

Cody is said to have grown up reading the books, which were conceived by Francine Pascal in 1983 and written by an army of ghostwriters over the next two decades. While wildly popular, the books have been criticised for their unrealistic treatment of teenage girls' lives. Not only were both twins faultlessly beautiful, but Jessica suffered the deaths of five boyfriends over the course of the series, while Elizabeth fell in love with a Parisian prince and an English viscount.

Universal Pictures is still in negotiations to pick up the movie rights to the Sweet Valley High series, and there are as yet no details of cast or crew as yet.