When you’re lucky enough to call Eric Roberts "dad", that means a) you’ve got a direct access to some killer Mickey Rourke stories, b) every other movie shown on Cinemax between midnight and six a.m. will help put you through college and c) you aunt is America’s Erstwhile Sweetheart, Julia Roberts. The former two probably won’t get you much of a start in Hollywood, but the third will automatically get the nepotism factor working in your favor, and that means everything (as Frank Stallone, Don Swayze and William Mapother will tell you over a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue – Johnny Walker Red if they’re paying).
Look, I ain’t sayin’ Emma Roberts didn’t earn her shot at stardom; I’m just sayin’ ol’ girl had it easier than, say, Edna Gunderson from Skokie, Illinois (best gentile Tzeitel I’ve ever seen). No one’s surprised that the very presentable, sixteen-year-old niece of Julia Roberts is booking movies and TV shows left and right like a Wayans brother. She’s gone from the star of Nickelodeon’s Unfabulous to the lead in this summer’s Nancy Drew (directed by Andrew Fleming, who did the very funny Dick) to the title role in Wild Child. Set up as a co-production between Universal and Working Title, this latest film is written by Lucy Dahl, who probably didn’t have it so rough as a writer with that last name either (though I can’t imagine her father was a joy to be around), and is about a spoiled American bad girl who gets shipped off to an English boarding school where she becomes a lesbian (I may be embellishing a tad on that last bit, but Variety‘s Michael Fleming did say the role would allow Roberts to "show some edge").
The film will begin shooting this summer and will probably turn up in theaters next spring. Nick Moore will direct.