Barbie's America Ferrera set for big career change for new movie

Barbie star America Ferrera is stepping behind the camera for an adaptation of Erika Sánchez's novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.

Deadline reports that the film is in development at Amazon MGM Studios' Orion Pictures, after having previously been set at Netflix.

Linda Yvette Chávez, who previously worked with America on the Netflix comedy series Gentefied has penned the script. No cast has been announced yet for the project.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter follows Julia Reyes, a Chicago girl whose dreams of becoming a famous writer put her at odds with her traditional Mexican immigrant parents.

Julia's parents don't understand her love for writers such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and the music of the Ramones and wish she was more like her sister Olga. But when Olga dies unexpectedly in an accident, Julia desperately tries to hold her family together while uncovering her sister's truth and understanding the wounds of the past.

The now Oscar-nominated America previously said of the project: "Years ago, I fell in love with Erika L Sánchez's stunning novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.

"The depth, wit and searing intelligence of her writing, and her young Latina heroine, struck me to my core and left me wanting so much more.

"I am truly honoured and humbled to direct Linda Yvette Chávez's beautifully adapted screenplay. The opportunity to direct the work of these two incredibly talented Latina writers is a dream come true. I can't wait to share this film with the many fans of the novel, and to introduce this funny, profound, and resonant story to the world."

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is yet to receive a release window.