Sia Directing 'Sister' Film Starring Maddie Ziegler

BY Gregory AdamsPublished Sep 8, 2015

Sia has announced that she'll once again be teaming up with frequent music video collaborator Maddie Ziegler, but this time for an upcoming film. Sia will write and direct the upcoming movie, which is called Sister.

The 1000 Forms of Fear singer-songwriter recently revealed that she wrote Sister as a one-page short story eight years ago. After self-directing her "Chandelier" video, which stars the young Ziegler, she decided to rework the story as the upcoming film.

"I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I wanted to make a movie, because I thought it would be seen as a vanity project, because I was a singer," she told the crowd last weekend at the Venice Days film festival [via The Hollywood Reporter]. "And then last year after I made the 'Chandelier' video, I realized that I was pretty good at directing, so I felt a little bit braver."

Little is known about the plot thus far, but Sia has apparently already started work on the film, working over the dialogue with children's author Dalles Clayton. According to Sia, they've already spent "three-and-a-half weeks just on the sofa, mapping it out." An ETA has yet to be established.

"For me, the process was basically, I work out the movie. I'll act it out, I'll have the dialogue already in my head," she said. "It's really the formatting. … I can't be bothered to learn Final Draft. I'm not a technical person. Like, when I sing, I just want to sing the melody and write the lyrics. I don't want to have to do production, which is very technical. I don't enjoy that."

Ziegler has yet to comment on the upcoming project. The promo run behind 1000 Forms of Fear had her appearing in Sia's videos for "Chandelier," "Elastic Heart" and "Big Girls Cry."

Latest Coverage