Katherine Heigl plays a young woman who has a closet full of bridesmaid dresses after having followed many of her girlfriends down the aisle.

AP / Chris Pizzello Chris Pizzello

Katherine Heigl, the pretty blonde star of the TV hit Grey’s Anatomy, will begin filming the romantic comedy 27 Dresses Monday at locations around Rhode Island, even though the film is set in New York City.

A publicist for the film said that most of the Rhode Island scenes, shot here to take advantage of the state’s favorable tax advantages, will be interiors. Heigl’s apartment will be a set that has been built inside the new Dean Studios in Cumberland. Another set will be built inside Hope Artiste Village, a former industrial facility in Pawtucket. There will be interiors of real buildings, too, in Providence and Pawtucket, as well as South County locations and a beachfront location that is being coordinated with the state parks department. The publicist said the location sites haven’t been finalized.

The film is an “always-a-bridesmaid-never-a-

bride” story in which the 28-year-old Heigl plays a young woman who has a closet full of bridesmaid dresses after having followed many of her girlfriends down the aisle. She’s secretly in love with her boss, played by Ed Burns, but he falls instead for her gorgeous sister, played by Malin Akerman. James Marsden, who has had roles in the X-Men movies and Superman Returns, plays an ambitious newspaper reporter covering the wedding beat who gets involved in the impending marriage.

27 Dresses is a co-production between 20th Century Fox and Spyglass Entertainment, the co-producer of Underdog, which was filmed in Rhode Island last summer. It will be directed by Anne Fletcher, who did the dance movie hit Step Up, from a script by Aline Brosh McKenna, whose most recent film was The Devil Wears Prada. The film is expected to shoot in Rhode Island through the end of June, followed by several days of filming in New York City.

mjanuson@projo.com