page_title: Juno (film)
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Juno (film) / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: Diablo Cody, writer of the film Juno
context_page_description: Juno is a 2007 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody. Ellen Page stars as the title character, an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her. Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney and J. K. Simmons also star. Filming spanned from early February to March 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia. It premiered on September 8 at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, receiving a standing ovation.
  Juno won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and earned three other Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Page. The film's soundtrack, featuring several songs performed by Kimya Dawson in various guises, was the first chart-topping soundtrack since Dreamgirls and Fox Searchlight's first number one soundtrack. Juno earned back its initial budget of $6.5 million in twenty days, the first nineteen of which were when the film was in limited release. It went on to earn $231 million worldwide. Juno received acclaim from critics, many of whom placed the film on their top ten lists for the year.
context_section_description: Diablo Cody was first approached to write a screenplay by film producer Mason Novick, who had previously landed her a book deal for her memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, after discovering her blog about stripping. He persuaded her to adapt the book for the screen, but suggested that she first write a screenwriting sample to show studios; that sample became Juno. After deciding on an adoption storyline, Cody collected the stories of adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents, including that of her then-husband, an adoptee who reunited with his birth parents after she wrote the film. She also found inspiration in the story of a close friend who had become pregnant in high school and used some details from her friend's experience in the film, such as mistreatment from an ultrasound technician. Much of Juno, however, was based on Cody's own high school experiences: She dated a tic-tac-loving boy similar to Paulie, she was best friends with a cheerleader like Leah, and she used a hamburger phone identical to the one that appears in the film. After writing the screenplay over seven weeks in the Starbucks section of a Target store in Crystal, Minnesota, Cody compared writing to breathing, seeing Juno as an extension of herself.
  Novick sent Cody's screenplay to his friend Jason Reitman; by the time Reitman had read halfway through the script, he felt that if he did not direct the film, he would regret it for the rest of his life. Initially, Reitman found it difficult to acquire the script, because his first film, Thank You for Smoking, had not been released yet, so he did not have any feature film credits. Other directors, including Jon Poll, were considered, but Reitman was chosen and he interrupted work on his own spec script in order to direct Juno. Cody says she had a cynical attitude when writing Juno ("I didn't ever think this film would be produced") and, indeed, the film was delayed by financial problems. After its controversial nature scared off a number of major studios, John Malkovich's production company, Mr. Mudd, took on the project. It was later brought to production company Mandate Pictures by co-producer Jim Miller.
  The funding originated from the United States.
caption: Diablo Cody wrote the film based on many of her own high school experiences.
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