"Saturday Night Live" head writer Tina Fey, who also co-hosts the show's "Weekend Update" with Jimmy Fallon, is angling to write her way into a big-screen acting debut.

She will adapt Margaret Talbot's Feb. 24 New York Times Magazine article, "Girls Just Want to Be Mean," for Lorne Michaels to produce via his Paramount Pictures-based SNL Studios.

Paramount plunked down a mid-six-figure sum for Fey to adapt the piece, which the writer brought to Michaels with an eye toward turning it into a high-concept comedy.

"Mean" examines the adolescent phenomenon of girl-to-girl cruelty, which can take the form of jibes, vicious e-mails and malicious gossip.

The magazine piece's focus was the nonprofit Empower Program, which is run by Rosalind Wiseman and seeks to get girls to treat one another more kindly. Its programs include Apologies Day, in which girls who have backstabbed or dumped a friend apologize in public for their behavior.

In May, Crown Books will publish Wiseman's book "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence."

Fey is the first female head writer in "Saturday Night Live's" 27-year history.

She appears in the surreal comedy "Martin & Orloff," featuring the comedy troupe the Upright Citizens Brigade; show premiered at the recent South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

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