Name: Moonsong: A Life In Seven Verses
Director: Rebecca Miller

For an independent film that has not yet rolled camera, the cast list is the pitch. Rebecca Miller‘s Moonsong: A Life In Seven Verses, a portrait of Margaret Wise Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, now heads to buyers with an ensemble built around Elle Fanning and Julianne Moore: Josh Hartnett, Oscar winner Emma Thompson, Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins, Danny Huston, Bafta winner Robert Aramayo and Chloe Pirrie have all signed on.

As Deadline first reported, The Veterans will launch international sales at the American Film Market with a sizzle reel and the screenplay, handling territories outside the U.S., while CAA Media Finance represents U.S. rights. Fanning plays Brown, with Moore as the poet Michael Strange and Hartnett as the socialite “Big Bill” Gaston, the two lovers whose mesmerizing yet destructive pull shapes her path in the story. Roles for the other new arrivals have not been disclosed.

Set in New York in the 1930s, the film follows Brown as she discovers her gift for writing for children and pioneers a sensory approach to children’s literature alongside a community of artists and educators. Miller adapted the screenplay from Leonard S. Marcus’s biography Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon. Brown published more than a hundred books, and her classics have since sold more than 300 million copies in more than 25 languages.

“Margaret feels profoundly modern to me,” Miller said, describing Brown as “one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered” and someone who “never lost her child-like view of the world, yet also became a phenomenon within her business.” Played by Fanning, the director added, “she will be a totem for young people who are looking for a way to live without compromising the multiplicity of their true selves.”

It is Miller’s ninth film and her first scripted feature since She Came To Me, following a filmography that runs from Personal Velocity to The Ballad of Jack and Rose and Maggie’s Plan. Her most recent project, Mr. Scorsese, a five-part documentary portrait of Martin Scorsese for Apple TV+, won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and a DGA Award. Scorsese is now on board as executive producer.

Behind the camera, Miller has lined up cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, an Oscar nominee for The Lighthouse and Nosferatu; Academy Award-winning special effects veteran Neal Scanlan, known for creature effects, animatronics and puppetry on the Star Wars sequel trilogy and Project Hail Mary; Oscar-nominated costume designer Malgosia Turzanska (Hamnet); and production designer Kim Jennings. Round Films, the banner of Damon Cardasis and Miller, produces; Amanda Goodwin, Keri Selig and Sasha Alexander brought the book to the company. Shooting is set to start in May 2027.

Until then, Moonsong exists as a script, a sizzle reel and a cast sheet — and on the market floor, it is the cast sheet that will do most of the talking.