Amanda Lipitz directed one of our favorite documentaries released this year, and now she’s set to make her narrative directorial debut. The “Step” helmer has signed on to bring an English-language remake of “Instructions Not Included” to the big screen for Lionsgate, Deadline reports. The original Spanish-language film was Mexico’s third-highest grossing movie in 2013.
“Instructions Not Included” follows “a playboy jazz musician [whose life] is upended when a former flame leaves their baby girl for him to raise alone,” the source summarizes. “He smuggles himself and the kid across the border to find her in Los Angeles. Ten floors up, he sees the girl wander into a pool and plunges 10 floors to save her. He promptly gets a stuntman job and raises the young girl. Six years later, the birth mother returns and wants to be part of her daughter’s life.”
Lipitz will direct and produce. The Tony-winning Broadway producer is also set to produce a narrative version of her feature directorial debut, “Step,” for Fox Searchlight. The doc premiered at Sundance 2017, where Searchlight bought it for a whopping $4 million. Lipitz took home the Special Jury Award for Inspirational Filmmaking at the fest.
“Step” centers on three senior girls and the rest of their step team — known as the Lethal Ladies — who attend The Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, which was founded with the goal of sending every one of its students to college. The crowdpleaser sees the girls making their way through the overwhelming, complicated, and emotional college application process and dancing their way to the state step competition.
