Netflix has started production on The Half of It, writer-director Alice Wu’s follow-up to her 2004 feature film Saving Face. The new movie joins Netflix’s expanding roster of live-action teen-focused films like Tall Girl and A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting.

As the follow-up to the Sony Pictures Classics release Saving Face, The Half of It is described by Netflix as “a modern day Cyrano-meets-Pygmalion” in which “a shy, introverted, Chinese-American, straight-A student finds herself helping the school jock woo the girl they both secretly love. In the process, each teaches the other about the nature of love as they find connection in the most unlikely of places.”

Daniel Diemer Samantha Chan

The cast includes Leah Lewis (Charmed) as Ellie Chu; Daniel Diemer (Sacred Lies) as Paul Munksy; Alexxis Lemire (The Other Mother) as Aster Flores; Becky Ann Baker (Girls) as Mrs. Geselschap; Catherine Curtin (Orange is the New Black) as Colleen Munsky, Wolfgang Novogratz (Sierra Burgess is a Loser) as Trig Carson; and Enrique Murciano (Bloodline) as Deacon Flores. (Leah Lewis, Alexxis Lemire and Enrique Muricano are pictured above).

Producers are Anthony Bregman of Likely Story (Someone Great, Private Life), M. Blair Breard (Better Things, Baskets) and Alice Wu (Saving Face). Executive Producers are Likely Story’s Erica Matlin and Greg Zuk. David Bausch (First Wives Club, The Detour) is Co-Producer.

Likely Story’s slate of projects includes Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking Of Ending Things at Netflix, Downhill with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell at Searchlight, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights musical at Warner Brothers, and the Netflix TV series Living With Yourself starring Paul Rudd and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.