Emma Watson and Sofia Coppola team up for 'The Bling Ring'

Every once in a while you hear of a project pairing that makes perfect sense. That's how I feel about Sofia Coppola directing The Bling Ring. The movie will be based on the true story of a few status-conscious L.A. teenagers who stole clothes, jewelry, cash, and drugs from celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. They broke in, raided their closets, and then wore the stolen loot out to the clubs frequented by the same celebrities.

The teens were profiled in a memorable 2010 Vanity Fair article. While they came from backgrounds characterized by strife, they were also the product of fairly well-off families, many of whom had jobs in the movie industry. Adding another dimension to the whole tale, two of the teens were going to potentially be celebrities themselves. They were being followed for a reality show called "Pretty Wild." That got complicated once its stars were arrested. Lifetime got to the project first, though I imagine the TV movie will not bear more than a passing resemblance to Coppola's project.

Coppola's known for her moody, character-driven pieces. I loved her most recent work, Somewhere, which centered on a bored and depressed celebrity living at the Chateau Marmont reconnecting with his daughter. I think The Bling Ring will be a good chance for her to combine her knack for ennui with an actual plot. Coppola knocks tone out of the park, but she rarely tries to combine that with actual action and thrills.  She's said she wants to use the case to "reveal a sobering view of our modern culture" and comment on the celebrity machine. Who better to do that than Coppola?

She's already cast Harry Potter's Emma Watson in one of the lead roles. In the real-life case, there were a few major players and more on the sidelines, so I imagine the number of leads could depend on what works for the adaptation. Looking up to celebrities is nothing new, but the extremes these kids went to in order to feel like they were as cool as celebrities is extreme. At the same time, tabloids like TMZ have further removed the wall between the star and the audience. These paparazzi are like private detectives, following the stars' every move. Perhaps it's only a natural extension of this invasion of privacy that drove the teens to break into their houses and steal everything they thought would make them like the pretty faces they saw in the magazines. Given Coppola's already insidery view on celebrity, she'll be able to make this tale both real and precisely critical.