Hollywood movie deal for British author

A British book about Greek gods living in the modern world, written when its author was working a bookshop, is being made into a star-studded Hollywood film featuring Christopher Walken and Sharon Stone. Marie Phillips's Gods Behaving Badly, which sees Aphrodite working as a phone-sex operator and Dionysus running a nightclub in London, will transfer its setting to New York when it is directed by Marc Turtletaub, the producer of 2006 US comedy-drama Little Miss Sunshine. Production will begin next month.

"You can sometimes have wild dreams but I didn't in any way expect this to happen," said Ms Phillips. "We sold the film options many years ago, but this came out of nowhere. It has been developed for a year or two and they told me just before the filming started." Phillips, 35, worked in bookshops to finance her creative writing. She submitted her manuscript to Jonathan Cape publishing director Dan Franklin, who purchased the British and Commonwealth rights. The book was published in 2007.

The film will see Walken play Zeus, a blue-collar worker, Stone play Aphrodite, along with Alicia Silverstone as a mortal woman whose life becomes entwined with those of the deities.

Transformers star John Turturro will take a turn as Hades, king of the underworld.