“Secret Life of Bees” cast is set with Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah and Sophie Okonedo. Dakota Fanning rep is working out a deal for Fanning to star as the 14-year-old girl who flees her home and is taken in by an unconventional trio of beekeeping sisters

The story takes place in South Carolina in 1964. Hudson plays a caregiver to Lily Owens (Fanning). Together they escape her troubled relationship with her father by running away to a South Carolina town where the stay with Latifah, Okonedo and Keys, the beekeepers.

The film goes to the lens Jan. 9 in North Carolina.

“Secret Life of Bees,” by Sue Monk Kidd, was published in 2002 and remained on the New York Times bestseller for some time.