After taking a brief hiatus following 2009’s Precious, Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels will soon be headed for the small screen.

Deadline is reporting that Daniels has been tapped to write and direct a TV series version of the Jacqueline Susann 1966 classic novel Valley of the Dolls for NBC.

The book, which has sold over 30 million copies, follows the lives of three best female friends over two decades through achievements and self-destruction. The title Valley of the Dolls is the novel’s slang term for the sleeping pill all the women develop an addiction to. There's no word yet if Daniels will keep the story a period piece in the 1950s like the novel, move it to the 1960s like the feature film version or completely modernize it to current day.

Daniels’s adaptation will be Valley of the Dolls fourth screen incarnation. Its most famous version was produced in 1967's classic and campy feature film, which starred Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins and Sharon Tate. The tale also later became a mini-series in 1981 and late night soap in 1994.

For those looking for more of Daniels’s work on the big screen, his next directing project, The Paperboy, starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron, is due to hit theaters in 2012.

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