Elle Fanning, star and executive producer of Civic Center Media/MRC Television’s Hulu series The Great, is expanding her relationship with the indie studio partnership. She and her sister Dakota Fanning have teamed to launch Lewellen Pictures production company and have entered a first-look television deal with the studio, a joint venture between UTA and MRC. The Fanning sisters plan to develop feature film and television projects, as well as other forms of media, including podcasts.

Their first project under the pact is an adaptation of Megan Miranda’s bestselling novel The Last House Guest, which is being developed as a crime thriller series. Sarah Walker (The Secrets She Keeps, Wentworth) will write and executive produce the series. It centers on an intimate friendship between two girls who fall violently in love with each other’s differences, which, in the end, create doubt, betrayal and tragedy. The Fannings will executive produce alongside Brittany Kahan Ward and Mary Jane Skalski for Echo Lake Entertainment.

“Elle has brought such perspective and thoughtfulness as an executive producer on The Great,” said Elise Henderson, President of MRC Television. “We are excited by the vision she and Dakota have for Lewellen Pictures and for MRC Television to provide a home for the stories they will tell.”

Elle Fanning has received Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award nominations for her work on The Great, which is now in production on its second season for Hulu. She recently starred in Sally Potter’s The Roads Not Taken and Netflix’s All The Bright Places, the latter of which she also produced.

Dakota Fanning was recently was seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and TNT’s Angel of Darkness. She will next star in The First Lady for Showtime.

The siblings will star together for the first time in the feature film adaptation of The Nightingale for Tristar and director Melanie Laurent.

They have also brought together existing projects in development that they had been production individually and will now fall under the Lewellen Pictures banner. That includes feature I’ve Got Your Number set up at Amazon Studios with Dakota and Freddie Highmore attached to star, Kiwi Smith and Jessica O’Toole adapting the Sophie Kinsella novel, Echo Lake Entertainment, Alfresco Pictures and Joey Plager producing; One Click podcast which Elle will narrate and is executive producing along with Brittany Kahan Ward, Vespucci and Cadence 13; and The Girl From Plainville, a limited series for Elle to star in for UCP and Hulu, with showrunners Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus. Brittany Kahan Ward also executive produces.

“We are thrilled to be launching this company together and to be teaming up with MRC who have been excellent partners on The Great. Our goal is to tell stories, through comedy and drama, which are authentic to the human experience, and not just from our own perspective,” said the Fannings in a joint statement. “We also want to create content that we wouldn’t be able to make just as actors. We can learn so much when we look outside our specific points of view. We have been fortunate to work with many brilliant storytellers and hope to continue that track while also providing opportunities for many more.”

At MRC Television, Elle and Dakota Fanning joins a roster of talent that includes The Outsider‘s Cynthia Erivo, Richard Price and Jessie Nickson-Lopez, Ozark‘s Julia Garner and Chris Mundy, Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman’s T-Street (Knives Out) as well as Fear the Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson, Familystyle and writer-producer Noelle Valdivia.

Dakota and Elle Fanning are repped by UTA, Echo Lake Entertainment and attorney Steve Warren. Walker is repped by Gersh. [Source]