Shop Till You Drop in "Confessions of a Shopaholic"

Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic and her four subsequent novels (Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Shopaholic and Sister and Shopaholic and Baby) are an international phenomenon, winning a passionate and devoted readership. Each book has made best-seller lists in the U.S. and the U.K.; at one point, Kinsella had three books on the Washington Post’s Top Ten list.

The series’ success caught the eye of producer Jerry Bruckheimer who championed the subsequent film adaptation, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” from Touchstone Pictures and Bruckheimer Films. “Our company is always looking for fresh ideas,” says Bruckheimer. “Sophie helped us throughout the making of the movie to ensure that Rebecca Bloomwood’s transition to the screen would be faithful to the heart and theme of the novels.”

In the film, Rebecca (Isla Fisher) is a fun-loving girl who is really good at shopping—a little too well, perhaps. She dreams of working for her favorite fashion magazine, but can’t quite get her foot in the door—until ironically, she snags a job as an advice columnist for a financial magazine published by the same company. As her dreams are finally coming true, she goes to ever more hilarious and extreme efforts to keep her past from ruining her future.

“If you look at the debt crisis going on in the U.S. right now, with everybody having 27 credit cards, everybody can relate to Rebecca,” says executive producer Mike Stenson.

Kinsella introduced the character Rebecca eight years ago. Since then, more than 15 million readers in 35 countries—including the United States and Great Britain, throughout all of Western and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, China, Korea and the Philippines—have grown to love the endearing, hapless, eternally optimistic shopaholic.

”Rebecca was a character I totally identified with,” says director P.J. Hogan (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”). “A shopaholic is somebody who believes heavily in retail therapy. Feel bad? Go into a store, you’re cheered up instantly. Everybody can understand that. When we’re down, we’ve all used retail as a way to cheer ourselves up, but Rebecca just can’t stop. She’s never met a bargain that she can say no to.”

For the film version, both the setting and Rebecca’s nationality have emigrated westward across the pond to America. “In my head and in the books, of course, she will always be British,” says the author. “But I have met Becky Bloomwoods all over the world, of every nationality. What matters to me most is that in the film, we have her heart, her foibles and her comedy. The film uses elements from the first two Shopaholic books, the second of which is in fact set in New York. Many of my favorite scenes are in the film, and watching them being shot was a huge treat. Becky’s story is really a parable for our times as she tries to cut back her spending, put away the credit cards and turn her life around.”

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.