Jennifer LopezLaura Ziskin ("Spider-Man") and Jennifer Lopez are teaming to develop the novel "Dirty Girls Club" for Lopez to topline, reports Variety.
Pic would be based on unpublished first effort from Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, a former features writer for the Boston Globe and more recently a Latin pop music writer for the Los Angeles Times. Story concerns six college friends -- Latina women of different national extractions and economic strata -- who reunite 10 years after graduating and continue to rendezvous every six months thereafter.
Valdes-Rodriguez wrote the novel last February, after her acrimonious split with the Times left her unemployed and scrambling for work. After accusing the Times of racial insensitivity, Valdes-Rodriguez spent 10 days writing 300 pages of the novel she'd kicked around for years.
In a stunning blitzkrieg of bidding, St. Martin's Press acquired the rights to the femme novel for just under $500,000 in July. Col-based Ziskin then brought it in to the studio, with an eye toward having Lopez star.
Valdes-Rodriguez had previously expressed interest in having Lopez play Usnavys, a Puerto Rican PR exec whose mother named her after the U.S. Navy's flotilla anchored in San Juan harbor.