Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Scott Rudin Productions has acquired screen rights to David Levithan and Rachel Cohn’s new novel Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, and has attached Tiny Furniture writer/director/star Lena Dunham to write the script and direct. Rudin, who’ll  produce, hasn’t yet set it yet at a studio. Levithan and Cohn previously wrote the novel Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, which was turned into the Peter Sollett-directed film. Knopf publishes Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares today. Two teens, left alone in Manhattan for Christmas, develop a connection when she leaves a notebook full of literary clues at the Strand bookstore and he follows the clues and leaves some of his own. There are dares in the book that lead the characters to crowded places like Macys and FAO Schwartz. Along the way, they reveal information about themselves, leading to an inevitable meeting.

Dunham, who most recently starred in, wrote, directed and produced Tiny Furniture (it gets released November 12 by IFC), is one to watch. The 24-year old daughter of painter Carroll Dunham and photographer Laure Simmons, she is now casting an HBO pilot which she’ll direct and star in, and which she’s exec producing with Judd Apatow. Her film Tiny Furniture is nominated for two Gotham Independent Film Awards. Dunham is repped by UTA, the book was brokered by WME.