Aniston’s Dumplin’ Plopping Down in Atlanta

Australian native Danielle Macdonald (Patti Cake$) will play Willowdean, a chubby teen obsessed with Dolly Parton, with Jennifer Aniston as her mom, a former beauty queen who now runs the local small-town Texas pageant, in the music-driven comedy Dumplin’, which will begin filming in Atlanta in August. Based on Julie Murphy’s 2015 young adult novel about the upheavals that go down when Will and her oddball friends enter the pageant and redefine it for unattractive people, Aniston’s and partner Kristin Hahn’s Echo Films is executive producing (it was also behind Aniston’s The Yellow Birds, which shot in Atlanta), with Hahn penning the adapted screenplay. Anne Fletcher (Step Up, Hot Pursuit, The Proposal) will direct.