Sia Is Making a Movie with Maddie Ziegler and Releasing a New Single

Expect to see a lot from Sia in the near future.

The singer announced that she's directing a film called Sister with Maddie Ziegler, the child dancer who starred in her "Chandelier" and "Elastic Heart" videos, during the Venice Film Festival.

Furthermore, "Alive," which will be the lead story off her seventh album, titled This Is Acting, is set to drop September 26.

First Sister: According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sia announced that she'll once again be in the director's chair at Venice Days, a sidebar of the international film festival.

"I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I wanted to make a movie, because I thought it would be seen as a vanity project, because I was a singer. ... And then last year after I made the 'Chandelier' video, I realized that I was pretty good at directing, so I felt a little bit braver."

The film will based on a one-page short story that the singer/songwriter wrote eight years ago.

Having no experience in the film biz, Sia sought out help. "So first I paid a guy from a juice bar to help me write it, who had gone to film school, and it turned out it wasn't quite right," she explained. Then she turned to her friend children's book author Dalles Clayton. "He and I spent three-and-a-half weeks just on the sofa, mapping it out." She went on to explain:

"For me, the process was basically, I work out the movie. I'll act it out, I'll have the dialogue already in my head. It's really the formatting... I can't be bothered to learn Final Draft. I'm not a technical person. Like, when I sing, I just want to sing the melody and write the lyrics. I don't want to have to do production, which is very technical. I don't enjoy that. What I do enjoy is the creative process."

Speaking of the creative process, keep on the look out for a new Sia album. Idolator reports that the singer will release the single "Alive" September 26 as the lead track of This Is Acting.

Originally meant for Adele's elusive third album, the song was cast-off at the last minute, according to Sia. "It's about [Adele's] life, so I now sing a song from [Adele's] perspective," Sia says.

This Is Acting is already in the can, so unlike Adele's album, we can expect to hear it sometime soon.

"I'm calling it This Is Acting because they are songs I was writing for other people, so I didn't go into it thinking, This is something I would say," she explained to NME in February. "It's more like play-acting. It's fun."