The adaptation will be written and directed by Sarah Polley, who won the Oscar for best screenplay for the 2022 film Women Talking, according to Deadline.
Polley also wrote the 2017 limited series Alias Grace and played herself in an episode of Apple TV’s The Studio.
The film will be produced by Joy Gorman Wettels, Plan B Entertainment and StudioCanal, with Focus Features set to distribute it.
This will be Eilish’s first film role. She played women’s empowerment cult leader Eva in Swarm, a 2023 satirical miniseries about a woman whose obsession with a pop star takes her down a dark path. She won the people’s choice award for TV performance of the year for it.
The Bell Jar, first published in 1963, is the only novel by American poet Sylvia Plath. It follows Esther Greenwood, a gifted student who wins a prestigious internship at a New York fashion magazine, but gradually descends into depression as she struggles with identity as well as societal expectations for women and her own ambitions.
The novel, widely considered semi-autobiographical, draws heavily on Plath’s own experiences with mental illness. She died by suicide a month after its publication in the UK.
