Read The Screenplay For June Squibb Movie

Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind the year’s buzziest movies continues with Thelma, starring June Squibb doing most of her own stunts in a action comedy that marks Josh Margolin‘s featuring directing debut and his first screenplay.

Magnolia Pictures beat out other bidders to acquire Thelma after its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It whizzed into theaters June 21 and has now topped $9 million at the domestic box office, making it one of the year’s highest-grossing indie releases.

The film has since has picked up a Critics Choice nomination for Best Comedy and was named a Top 10 Independent Film by the National Board of Review. Squibb was nominated for Best Performance at the Independent Spirit Awards, where producer Zoë Worth is nominated for the Producer’s Award.

Squibb plays a 93-year-old grandmother (Squibb is 95 now) who is conned by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger). Joined by her scooter-bound friend Ben (Richard Roundtree in his last role), she sets out on a quest across Los Angeles to reclaim what was taken from her. Parker Posey, Clark Gregg and Malcolm McDowell also star.

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Margolin, who also edited the film, said the story was based on an experience of his own real-life grandmother, giving Squibb an up-close look at the character she was portraying via “little films that he’d made, like of Thelma going to the store or Thelma celebrating her birthday, just to get an idea of who she was and what she was like,” Squibb said at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles last month.

“To me, [the film] was always kind of an expression of, or a way to celebrate, my grandmother’s sort of spirit and her grit and her tenacity,” Margolin said. “And I think I just got excited about trying to explore that through the lens of a lo-fi action movie. And then tone was always really important. I never wanted it to feel like we were poking fun as much as sort of going along for the ride with her and experiencing these trials and tribulations through her lens.”

Check out his script below.