Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, the hit musical based on 2011 BBC documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, is to become a film.

The show, which premiered in Sheffield 18 months ago, is in development with Film4 and Sheffield-based Warp Films, the production company responsible for much of the back catalogue of Shane Meadows, as well as Chris Morris’s Four Lions, the acclaimed thriller ’71, and Ghost Stories, an adaptation of Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s stage show.

Jonathan Butterell, who oversaw the stage version, will make his directorial debut on the film; his previous big screen credits are as a choreographer on Finding Neverland and psychological thriller Stay. The writer of both musical and film is Tom MacRae; the score is by The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie Sells.

Whether the original production’s cast will also be retained for the film version has yet to be announced.

Nominated for five Olivier awards, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is the ebullient story of a 16-year-old schoolboy who harbours dreams of becoming a drag queen. Likened by the Guardian’s Michael Billington to Billy Elliot, the film-turned-stage-musical about a boy from the north with a passion for ballet, it was inspired by a BBC Three documentary about Jamie Campbell.

Commenting on the news, Campbell said: “All I originally wanted was to go to my school prom in a dress. Then Firecracker made the documentary. My story then inspired a West End musical. Now it’s a film! It’s incredible. Even I couldn’t have dreamed it.”

On 5 July 2018 the current production at the Apollo Theatre will be screened live to 510 cinemas. At the end of June, Trudie Styler’s unrelated directorial debut, Freak Show, will be released. Starring The Imitation Game’s Alex Lawther, it follows the story of a teenage boy who runs for homecoming queen at his conservative high school.