Lena Dunham adapting YA novel ‘Catherine, Called Birdy’ for film

Lena Dunham, the writer, actress and filmmaker best known for her hit HBO show “Girls,” has announced she’s planning to adapt the young adult novel “Catherine, Called Birdy” into film. The book by Karen Cushman, set in medieval England, follows a teenage girl who tries to resist the men her father wants her to marry.

Dunham made the announcement on Friday at the New Yorker Festival in Manhattan. “It’s hyper realistic and really pretty and it’s full of incest and beatings, but it’s a child’s story,” Dunham said. “I’ve been obsessed with it since I was a kid.”

Dunham, who previously wrote and directed the 2010 film “Tiny Furniture,” seems to realize that the adaptation might be a tough sell to studios, saying, “I just need to find someone who wants to fund a PG-13 medieval movie.”

The film wouldn’t be Dunham’s first foray into literature. Her new memoir, “Not That Kind of Girl,” has become a bestseller, and has received mostly good reviews -- it even received a kind of video endorsement from Jennifer Lopez’s personal trainer.