Actress Reese Witherspoon's production company is developing a movie based on the 1997 killing of Reena Virk, the 14-year-old from Saanich, B.C., who was murdered by schoolmates.

Type A Films said Friday that it had optioned the book Under the Bridge, an account of the killing by Canadian writer Rebecca Godfrey.

Catherine Hardwicke, who directed Thirteen and The Nativity Story, is set to helm the movie.

Witherspoon, a Hollywood A-lister, won an Oscar for portraying June Carter Cash in the biopic of Johnny Cash, Walk the Line. Her other screen credits include the Legally Blonde films and Election.

Godfrey, based in New York, says she is excited by the project, saying she believes Witherspoon's company will "handle the material in a sensitive way." The writer, who was raised in Victoria, B.C., won the $25,000 B.C. Award for Canadian Non-Fiction in 2006 for her book.

Under the Bridge has been highly acclaimed for its incisive account of Virk's horrific death, intimate portraits of those responsible for killing her and observations about Victoria and its suburbs.

Virk's death sparked a national outcry over the issue of bullying and the treatment of immigrants — Virk was the daughter of Indian immigrants.

Six girls, aged 14 to 16, were convicted in 1998 of assaulting Virk and given sentences of up to a year in jail. Two others, Warren Glowatski and Kelly Ellard, were eventually found guilty of second-degree murder and given life sentences.

Virk's father, Manjeet Virk, says he hopes the film will be "beneficial" and not sensationalize his daughter's death.