ChickFlicks picks 'Pastor'

'Frasier's' Gilpin, Leeves to produce

By DANA HARRIS

New Line Cinema's ChickFlicks has acquired feature rights to Bruce McIver's "Stories I Couldn't Tell While I Was a Pastor."

Project came to ChickFlicks through "Frasier" co-stars Peri Gilpin and Jane Leeves, who will produce the film through their production company, Bristol Cities.

Jim McGrath will adapt McIver's autobiography, in which he details his life as a young and progressive clergyman who's a widower and the father of a young daughter when he's assigned to the parish of a conservative Baptist church in Dallas.

"It's based on a man I knew and kept me fascinated all his life," the Dallas-raised Gilpin told Daily Variety.

McIver died last year.

McGrath, who has written for "Matlock" and "The Father Dowling Mysteries," is a former Methodist minister himself.

ChickFlicks' Sara Risher will produce the pic with Gilpin and Leeves. New Line VP Christopher Godsick oversees the untitled project's development with creative exec Magnus Kim.