Rebecca Hall Will LAY THE FAVORITE for Director Stephen Frears

The Town star Rebecca Hall has been tapped to take on the lead role in director Stephen Frears’ (The Queen) adaptation of Beth Raymor’s memoir Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling.  The book chronicles Raymor’s time spent mingling in the world of Vegas sports gambling. Frears directs from a script by D.V. De Vincentis, with whom he collaborated on High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank. The Wrap reports that Focus Features will produce. Hall most recently starred in the indie film Everything Must Go with Will Ferrell. Hit the jump to read a synopsis of Raymor’s memoir.

Here’s the synopsis for Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling:

It’s hard not to like the breezy, ingenuous voice of this plucky protagonist who proves she’s game for any kind of new experience. Hailing from Ohio, Raymer eventually made her way to Las Vegas when she was 24 and found a lucrative position assisting a Queens-born, Stuyvesant High School-educated gambling operator, Dink Heimowitz. The lovable, irascible, big-bellied Dinky had shucked life as a bookmaker back in New York, having run into trouble, for professional sports gambling; he put Raymer and the other motley staff on the phones setting up bets for all kinds of sports matchups (baseball, football, horse racing, hockey) in order to find a line that gave him an edge. Dinky referred Raymer to a high-flying bookie on Long Island, Bernard Rose, who had his own offshore network. As girl Friday Raymer fetched doughnuts, placed calls, and acted as a runner, making wads of dough, but mostly Raymer cherished working among the assortment of gambling types, the low-end hustlers and misfits she chronicles with evident tenderness. (Amazon)