Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s CANCER VIXEN is believed to have nabbed the highest advance ever for a graphic novel but it looks like it’s earning its keep, with a movie deal in place before it’s even released, on Tuesday.. Cate Blanchett has signed on to star in the movie version of Marchetto’s battle with breast cancer.

Marchetto’s autobiography, which has been generating buzz ahead of its release by Knopf on Tuesday, describes how she fell in love with a celebrity restaurateur and was planning their wedding when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and realized that she had let her health insurance lapse. Her friends — stylists, gossip columnists, designers — rallied around her as she wore killer shoes to chemo sessions and strove to get married on time.

Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton, are in talks to serve as producers of the Working Title Films project.

Marchetto also write to tell us that she’ll be using some of the money from the book to sponsor a a day of free mammograms for women who don’t have insurance at the hospital where she received her treatments: St Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

That’s pretty darned swell of her, and she wanted us to pass the news along for any uninsured women cartoonists out there. We’ll pass along details as we get them.