'Fish Tank' Director Andrea Arnold Plans First US-Set Film, 'American Honey'

Andrea Arnold's films Red Road and i are must-sees, and her 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights is strong work, too. Those three films all have one thing in common, besides Arnold: they were all shot in the UK. Now Andrea Arnold is coming to America to shoot a film, and the result, American Honey, sounds like a road movie that could be a great framework in which a young new actress could take command of the screen.

Like so many other films we're hearing about right now, producers are selling distribution rights at Cannes as the festival gears up. Variety reports that the film is about "a runaway teenager selling magazine subscriptions around the U.S., who gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard-partying, law-bending and young love."

Arnold scripted, and has been developing this for a while with Film4. (And originally with Focus Features.) Last year it was called Mag Crew, and all the info we had was that it would be "inspired by teenage magazine sales crews." If that sounds like an arbitrary basis for a film, check out this New York Times article (or this Houston Press one) for more info on the sort of crews that likely inspired the film — it describes working conditions such as the following:

Sleeping three to a room in cheap motels, lowest seller on the floor, they survived some days on less than $10 in food money while their earnings were kept "on the books" for later payment.

So if you thought Arnold was suddenly going to make a bright and upbeat movie, worry not. If that's the starting point for the film, it sounds like this will be very much in line with her other films. And that's a great thing.

Producers on this one at this point are Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy (Beginners, Love Is Strange), with Thomas Benski and Lucas Ochoa from Pulse Films, and Pouya Shahbazian of Man Down Pictures.