Hollywood’s new favorite adolescent Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass) has signed on to star in an adaptation of the Andrea Portes novel Hick.  Variety reports that Portes also penned the script, which “tracks a 13-year-old Nebraska girl who gets more than she bargained for when she runs away to Las Vegas.”  Derrick Martini (Lymelife) is set to direct the coming-of-age drama.

Before becoming a hick, Moretz will next be seen as a child vampire in Let Me In, and draped in 1930s garb in Martin Scorsese’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  Hit the jump for a full synopsis of the Portes novel.

Here’s the synopsis for Hick via Amazon:

Portes's chilling debut tracks a 13-year-old Nebraska girl's hard-going life on the road. Young Luli knows losers—her "aging Brigitte Bardot" mother, Tammy, and her father, Nick, go at each other every night at the Alibi, the watering hole in hometown Palmyra, Neb. Tammy runs away one morning, and Nick soon follows, leaving Luli alone at home with the Smith and Wesson .45 her Uncle Nipper gave her. Pistol in tow, she hitches rides heading west to Vegas.

A crooked man (literally; he "looks like an italic," says smart-alecky Luli) named Eddie picks her up briefly before throwing her out of the car. Next comes cocaine-snorting grifter Glenda, who enlists Luli as an accessory to a robbery that goes awry. Glenda takes Luli under her wing. The two cross paths again with Eddie, who rapes Luli and ties her up in a secluded motel. Glenda comes to her rescue, but the confrontation with Eddie ends badly.

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