Kirsten Dunst is set to helm her debut feature. The “Fargo” star and Emmy nominee is bringing an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s influential 1963 novel “The Bell Jar” to the big-screen. Dunst co-wrote the script with Nellie Kim, and Dakota Fanning has signed on to star.

Fanning will play Esther Greenwood, a young woman from a Boston suburb who heads to NYC for a summer internship at a well-known magazine. What some would consider the opportunity of a lifetime doesn’t excite Esther so much as frighten and disappoint her, and she returns to her family home in Boston feeling depressed, increasingly unenthusiastic about her future, and unable to sleep.

Dunst earned rave reviews and a Cannes prize for her portrayal of a newlywed struggling with depression in 2011’s “Melancholia.”

“The Bell Jar” was Plath’s first and only novel. The poet originally published the semi-autobiographical book under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Plath committed suicide in 1963, a month after the book’s first UK publication date. The novel wasn’t published in the U.S. until 1971. “The Bell Jar” was made into a film in 1979.

Variety reports, “Priority’s Lizzie Friedman, Karen Lauder, and Greg Little will produce alongside Fanning and Echo Lake Entertainment’s Brittany Kahan. Celine Rattray is executive producing.”

The indie drama doesn’t mark the first time Dunst has stepped behind the camera. She previously directed two short films; 2007’s “Welcome” screened at Sundance, and 2010’s “Bastard” screened at Tribeca and Cannes.

Dunst rose to fame after her role as Claudia, a child vampire, in 1994’s “Interview with the Vampire.” Her other on-screen credits include “ER,” “The Virgin Suicides,” “Bring It On,” the “Spider-Man” franchise, “Marie Antoinette,” “Bachelorette,” and “Midnight Special.”

So “The Bell Jar” is a woman-centric story, has a woman director attached, two female screenwriters, is based on a novel by a woman, and has a number of female producers on-board. News this good calls for spirit fingers.