Molly Shannon-starrer “Wild Nights with Emily” has secured distribution, Deadline confirms. The comedy inspired by Emily Dickinson landed at Greenwich Entertainment with plans for a theatrical release in early 2019.

Written and directed by Madeleine Olnek (“The Foxy Merkins”), the film highlights a “vivacious, irreverent side of the poet that was covered up for years — most notably Emily’s lifelong romantic relationship with another woman,” the source notes. The SXSW pic incorporates Dickinson’s own words.

Olnek is among “Wild Nights with Emily’s” producers. She’s said that she was introduced to Dickinson’s work the same most people were — being required to read her poems in junior high school. “You hear a little bit about her biography, which is that she was a spinster who was a recluse, a shut-in, afraid to leave her room didn’t want to publish any of her work. Wrote poems that she hid in drawers and things. Wanted everything to be burned upon her death or only wanted to be published after she was dead or various forms of that,” the writer-director recalled.

Her perception of the “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” poet changed after reading a New York Times article detailing how “infrared technologies were allowing them to restore erasures to her papers. Erasures that had been made, and what those erasures were revealing was this lifelong relationship with this woman Susan Gilbert who then married her brother and lived next door.” She continued, “And the erasures were made by the mistress of Emily’s brother. Oh my God, she had a girlfriend and Emily’s brother had a mistress. All these different people in love with each other, all this soap opera.”

“SNL” alumna Shannon co-stars in Sarah Jessica Parker-led comedy “Divorce,” which has been renewed for a third season on HBO. “Private Life” and “Fun Mom Dinner” are among her recent film credits.