We’re in a sweet spot for strange, sci-fi-fueled, female-led horror. Whether it’s a robot dancing in a hallway, Elisabeth Sparkle and Sue forgetting to respect the balance, or a Native American girl being stalked by a Predator, we’re in a miniature renaissance. But the subgenre has been around forever, and beyond just the movies: in sci-fi novels, this kind of speculative fiction is incredibly fertile ground.
It was only a matter of time before the two crossed, and so now, one of the most revolutionary feminist sci-fi novels is coming to the big screen with a director and star who are already genre darlings.
According to Deadline, The Babadook’s Jennifer Kent has signed on to write and direct the 1973 sci-fi novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, with Companion and Heretic’s Sophie Thatcher set to star in dual roles. The story follows a young, bedridden girl who agrees to remotely control a genetically engineered 15-year-old girl and use it to influence the masses in a dystopian world where advertising is illegal. Thatcher will star as Philadelphia “P.” Burke, the controller, and Delphi, her “puppet.”
The Girl Who Was Plugged In was originally penned by James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name used by author, artist, and Air Force veteran Alice B. Sheldon. Sheldon is one of the most fascinating sci-fi authors ever: she never made any public appearances, but kept up plenty of correspondence as Tiptree, including becoming pen pals with Ursula K. Le Guin. She continued to use the pen name even after her true identity was revealed until she mortally shot her husband and then herself in 1987.
Sheldon’s — or, rather, Tiptree’s — works usually concerned themselves with second-wave feminism, something that was affected by the male pen name. The Girl Who Was Plugged In is written from the point of view of a smarmy, male narrator, a dystopian Rod Serling who says things like “P. Burke proves apt. Somewhere in that horrible body is a gazelle, an houri who would have been buried forever without this crazy chance. See the ugly duckling go!”
It’s exactly the kind of interesting subversion that would make for a great episode of Black Mirror, or, in this case, a whip-smart sci-fi movie.
Aside from a 1998 episode of the Canadian TV show Welcome to Paradox, The Girl Who Was Plugged In has never been adapted for the screen. (Little Shop of Horrors composer Alan Menken did adapt it as the first act of his musical Weird Romance, though.) But it’s hard to imagine a better pair to take on such a unique story: Jennifer Kent has proven she knows how to craft a world full of dread and female rage in The Babadook, and Sophie Thatcher has starred in plenty of sci-fi, horror, and sci-fi horror projects including Yellowjackets, The Book of Boba Fett, and Prospect.
Hopefully, together, the two of them can capture this story’s unique tone, something neither ironic nor earnest that dove deep into influencer culture before that was even a term people used. If there’s a reason that this story hasn’t been turned into a movie before, it’s probably because it was simply waiting for the world to be ready.
