Dakota Johnson to Direct Her First Feature Film

Dakota Johnson will direct her first feature film from a script written by "Cha Cha Real Smooth" actress Vanessa Burghardt.

Speaking at the Kering Women in Motion conversation event alongside her TeaTime Pictures producing partner Ro Donnelly on Monday at Cannes, Johnson said: “The girl that plays my daughter [in Cha Cha Real Smooth], Vanessa Burkhart, she is an autistic actress and musician and brilliant person, and we have been working with her on developing a script. She’s written a script, and it’s really special, and it’s about a young woman with autism. I feel very protective of her and her story in her mind, she’s just an unbelievable woman. I just don’t think I could allow anyone else to direct it. So we’ll see.”

Johnson directed her first short, "Loser Baby", which premiered at TIFF last fall. She admitted to extreme disappointment when that “proof of concept” was not picked up as a television show, saying, “It’s a short film about queer friends living in Los Angeles and their relationships and their complications and their friendships and their sexuality and their identity, and nobody wanted to f–king make it. And I was like, ‘Why? That’s such a global conversation, and it should be talked about all the time,’ but whatever. So it was a proof of concept that just is sitting there, proofing.”

Johnson is at Cannes with the Michael Angelo Covino-directed "Splitsville", which she co-produced and in which she plays a woman in an open relationship who tries to help a male friend recover from a breakup. It will premiere at the French festival on Monday night.

During the Kering Women in Motion conversation, Johnson also revealed that she has a “no a-hole” policy at TeaTime Pictures. “I love every person that works on the set. And the way that we we build our sets is really vibe-based, really energy-based.”

In June, she is set to appear in Celine Song‘s "Materialists", in which Johnson’s New York matchmaker character is caught between a new love interest (Pedro Pascal) and an old flame (Chris Evans). And next year, Johnson will star in the new Colleen Hoover adaptation "Verity", directed by Michael Showalter.