Dakota Fanning will follow up her role with Kristin Stewart in “New Moon” by starring with Kristin Stewart in “Runaways”.  I wonder if they’re, like, friends in real life too? 

Stewart is playing Joan Jett in the biopic about the short-lived 70s girl group The Runaways.  According to Variety, Fanning has agreed to join the production as the band’s lead singer Cheri Currie.  This is the latest attempt by Fanning to make us forget her adorable child-star origins… because playing a slutty, drug-addled rock star is about as far from “Man on Fire” as she is likely to get.

Just in case you have no idea who Cheri Currie is or why anyone would make a movie about her band, let me enlighten you:  The Runaways were the first pre-packaged, all-girl hard rock band.  The members - all around fifteen when they began touring - included Joan Jett and Lita Ford on guitar and a bleach-blonde named Cheri Currie as lead singer.  They had one minor hit – “Cherry Bomb” – which was supposedly written as a valentine by the band to Currie herself.  Yeah, there was kind of a teen-aged lesbian-vibe going on in The Runaways.

Currie also had a brief stint as an actress, starring alongside Jodie Foster in the 1979 classic “Foxes”.  That’s the movie that Foster likes to pretend she never made.  Seriously, if you ever get a chance to watch her sign autographs wait for the moment when someone in the crowd hands her the promo shot from “Foxes” and watch her bodyguards spring into action!  She could just refuse to sign the thing, but no!  She takes it away and has it destroyed!!  How awesome is it to be movie star?

Anyway, to capture that Currie look Fanning will need to become conversant with not just peroxide and blue eye-shadow but also with the all-lingerie wardrobe favored by the fifteen year-old singer… back in 1976 folks were a little hazy on child-pornography laws.