The Great Gilly Hopkins

Gilly Hopkins is an eleven-year-old girl who has been passed between foster homes for years, earning a reputation as difficult and unmanageable. Convinced that her birth mother, Courtney, will eventually come back for her, she pushes away the people trying to care for her and sets out to reunite with the woman she believes is waiting. Her arrival at the home of Maime Trotter, a warm and patient foster mother, begins to challenge Gilly's determination to need no one.

The film is directed by Stephen Herek, the fifteenth of the nineteen features he has directed, following Dead Like Me: Life After Death and preceding Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors. David Paterson wrote the screenplay, adapting Katherine Paterson's novel. Sophie Nélisse plays Gilly, with Kathy Bates as Maime Trotter, Glenn Close as Nonnie Hopkins, Octavia Spencer as Miss Harris, Bill Cobbs as Mr Randolph and Julia Stiles as Courtney. The credited cast numbers twenty-seven.

Made for a budget of five million dollars, the film drew modest audience scores, sitting at 6.5 out of ten on IMDb from around 5,700 votes and 6.6 out of ten on TMDB from roughly 250 votes. A critics' rating of 5.7 out of ten from seventeen reviews places it close to those audience figures. The story mixes comedy and drama in its portrait of a child searching for a home.