Helper

Emma Stone is negotiating to play the lead character Skeeter Phelan in "The Help" according to Entertainment Weekly.

Based upon Kathryn Stockett's book that explores the the complicated use by the upper class matriarchs of their servants in the American South of the early 1960's.

Phelan, a white recent college graduate uncomfortable with the current social norms of Mississippi at the time - a time when black maids did all the work and received no respect. Her plan is to write a book detailing the life of the various maids in the area, but her research soon uncovers not just racism but cruelty and criminal action by white society women, some of them even her friends.

Tate Taylor is directing and adapted the script

Taylor, Brunson Green, Michael Barnathan, Chris Columbus and Mark Radcliffe will produce the pic.

Filming kicks off this summer in Mississippi.