Diary of a Teenage Girl’s Marielle Heller To Direct Case Against 8 Gay Rights Drama

When we reviewed the documentary The Case Against 8 – about the fight to overturn the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California – we said it played out like a movie. Now it’s getting closer to becoming one, as THR reports that Diary of a Teenage Girl helmer, Marielle Heller, is set to direct a film version of the Sundance prize-winning doc.

Ben Cotner & Ryan White’s 2014 documentary delved deep into the court cases that sought to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage after the ballot measure Proposition 8 was enacted – where voters quashed a law allowing gay people to marry and attempted to enshrine in the State’s constitution that opposite sex marriage was the only possibility. This left hundreds of couple in limbo, who had married when it was legal and suddenly didn’t know whether they were still legally spouses or not. Unsurprisingly this led to court cases, which sought to find Prop 8 unconstitutional.

It should make a great movie, with such unlikely elements as the right wing Republican lawyer who successfully led the court cases that made George W. Bush President, signing up to fight to allow same sex couples to marry. There were also Perry Mason moments when witnesses seemed to change their mind about gay marriage on the stand, and even a full-on movie ending full of twists and last minute hiccups, before a big, emotional finale.

Chernin Entertainment is producing the movie, although there’s no news on when we might see it. The Case Against 8 film is one of several gay-rights focussed projects doing the rounds at the moment, including Dustin Lance Black and Gus Van Sant ambitious mini-series When We Rise, and Fox 2000’s slowly gestating movie about Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the case that led to the US Supreme Court allowing same sex marriage in all 50 states.