‘Bottoms’, a Lesbian Fight Club/Cheerleading Movie, Is on It’s Way

The film world has long been heavy on period pieces and tales of trauma when it comes to queer women, but it feels like we’re finally starting to gain ground when it comes to other genres. And an upcoming film sounds like exactly what we need to get pushing that envelope.

Bottoms is described as a movie following two unpopular queer high school seniors who start a fight club in an attempt to impress cheerleaders and get laid before they graduate. The screenplay for the film was written by Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, who recently collaborated on Shiva Baby. Seligman is also slated to direct, while Sennott will star.

While some shows and movies are still set on burying their gays in narratives so cliche it’s hard to imagine they’re still getting greenlit, others have swung the pendulum in the far opposite direction, depicting queer characters and relationships that are so healthy and or beloved within their stories that it actually becomes boring. All that really means is that we’re itching for media that lives somewhere in between — you know, like we’ve always gotten with heterosexual characters.

And Bottoms already sounds like it could be the dirtbag queer movie of our dreams.

“We’ve gotten the conversion therapy story, the very cutesy story and others as well — I love a lot of those movies,” Seligman said. “But Rachel really wanted to see something with really shitty female characters who are just despicable in their actions in the way that we’ve seen a lot of male characters in raunchy comedies, and I wanted something for queer teen girls. We met in the middle.” 

While Sennott will take on one of the main roles in the film, the remainder of the cast was recently announced as well. It includes Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Marshawn Lynch, Ruby Cruz, Punkie Johnson, Dagmara Dominczyk, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, and Ayo Edebiri.

Also of note is that the film will be produced by Lena Waithe’s ex-wife Alana Mayo through Orion Pictures and Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman’s Brownstone Pictures, which was also behind the famously “should have been queer” Pitch Perfect franchise.