EXCLUSIVE: Selena Gomez has zeroed in on her next film role. The recording star and actress has landed the female lead opposite Ant-Man‘s Paul Rudd in The Revised Fundamentals Of Caregiving, directed by Emmy winner Rob Burnett.
Rudd will star in the indie drama as Ben, a caregiver looking after a frustrated teenager named Trevor who is in the advanced stages of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Burnett, the veteran exec producer of The Late Show With David Letterman, adapted the script from Jonathan Evison’s 2013 novel of the same name. Donna Gigliotti and James Spies are producing the Levantine Film and Worldwide Pants production.
Gomez will play the role of Dot, a sassy young woman who hitches a ride with the pair during a road trip, and whose forwardness and lack of embarrassment about Trevor’s condition causes him to develop a crush on her.
Soon-to-be co-stars Gomez and Rudd were snapped Sunday night after the Golden Globes with writer/actor Justin Theroux, when a photo of the trio posted to Gomez’s Instagram garnered a modest 1.1 million likes. Filming on The Revised Fundamentals Of Caregiving begins January 22 in Atlanta.
It’s the latest foray into indie film for Gomez, whose big screen credits include Sony’s 2012 animation hit Hotel Transylvania. A role in Harmony Korine’s racy Spring Breakers added street cred to her resume, and she was most recently seen in William H. Macy’s directorial debut Rudderless, which premiered last year at Sundance.
Gomez next reprises her voice role in Sony’s animated sequel Hotel Transylvania 2opposite Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg. Offscreen, the global star who has over 107 million social media followers recently signed with Interscope Records after a long run with Disney’s Hollywood Records. She’s repped by WME, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Ziffren Brittenham.
