The hunt is on for a teenage actress to star in Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging. Casting is getting underway in London this week on the $18 million adaptation of the first in UK author Louise Rennison's best-selling Confessions Of Georgia Nicolson series about adolescent angst.

It has now been confirmed that Gurinder Chadha will be directing from the screenplay she co-wrote with Paul Mayeda Berges. Shooting is due to begin in the autumn at Ealing Studios and onlocation in a south coast seaside town. The producer of the film, backed by Paramount and Nickelodeon, is Lynda Obst.

Chadha is currently prepping the film, which will shoot with a British crew and cast, and is likely to be released in summer 2008.

There are six books in Louise Rennison's series, taking the lead character through her teen years. It is therefore possible that Georgia Nicolson will develop into a full-blown film franchise a la Harry Potter. The Rennison books, which some critics have compared to The Diaries Of Adrian Mole, are hugely popular in the US and the UK.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, published in 2001, was the first novel to feature Georgia Nicolson. The film version is being billed as a British equivalent to the classic US high school movie.

In the long-run, Chadha is still hopeful of making her big-screen adaptation of TV series Dallas . John Travolta and other cast members reportedly remain committed to the project, which was originally due to shoot late last year. The script is currently being reworked. One key challenge to overcome is the fact that audiences under 35 don't know or remember the original series.