K5 boards Groundswell’s Very Good Girls starring Dakota Fanning, Elizabeth Olsen

K5 has boarded international rights to writer/director Naomi Foner’s directorial debut Very Good Girls, which is set to shoot from June in New York.

Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen will co-star as two girls who pact to lost their virginity during their first summer out of high school but find their friendship tested to the limit when they both fall for the same street artist. Anton Yelchin and Peter Sarsgaard also star.

Michael London and Jonathan Fischer are producing for Groundswell, with Norton Herrick - who is also financing - and Lee Clay. Hawk Koch and Gale Anne Hurd are executive producers. 

The deal was negotiated by Erica Motley, Carl Clifton and Daniel Baur for K5, Jonathan Fischer for Groundswell and Norton Herrick for Herrick Entertainment.

Foner is best known for screenplays Running on Empty and Bee Season. Very Good Girls marks her directorial debut.

Olsen and Yelchin turned in breakout performances at last year’s Sundance, in Martha Marcy May Marlene and Like Crazy, respectively. Olsen also starred in Sundance comedy-drama Liberal Arts, Red Lights and Bruce Beresford’s upcoming Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding.

K5 founding partner Oliver Simon said of the film: “Naomi’s script is a wonderful mix of smart and sassy, but also poignant and truthful.  In Lizzie and Dakota, she has secured two of the very best young American actresses working in film today”.

This is the second collaboration for K5 and Groundswell after the two companies worked together on Oscar-nominated The Visitor in 2010.

K5’s Berlin sales slate also includes Paul Walker action film Vehicle 19; Night Train to Lisbon directed by Bille August and starring Jeremy Irons, Mélanie Laurent, Vanessa Redgrave and Bruno Ganz; and Voice From the Stone starring Maggie Gyllenhaal.

The company recently announced an LA-based film finance division.