Susanna Fogel, co-writer of Booksmart and director of action-comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, has signed on to write and direct The Mentor at Sony. The film is based on an original idea she is penning alongside her Spy Who Dumped Me collaborator David Iserson.
Plot details are mostly under wraps right now, but the film is being described as “a character-driven action movie about two women of different generations navigating their fraught relationship in the workplace”. Unfortunately, the job in question is the pursuit of an international fugitive arms dealer.
Fogel clearly has a thing for female two-handers, as Booksmart, The Spy Who Dumped Me, and her directorial debut Life Partners were each led by charismatic duos. The Mentor sounds like it will have more of an older/younger idea at its core, but if Fogel can bring the same laughs and charm she brought to her other screenplays, it has a good chance to be another crowd-pleasing hit.
Fogel recently directed the first two episodes of popular HBO Max series The Flight Attendant, and is currently up for a DGA Award for her work on the show. On the TV side of things, she’s also recently directed episodes of Gillian Flynn‘s Amazon series Utopia, Steven Spielberg‘s Amazing Stories revival for Apple, and the pilot of Amazon’s The Wilds.
Fogel and Iserson are also each writers of fiction, with Fogel’s satirical humour pieces being featured in The New Yorker, while her debut novel Nuclear Family was published back in 2017. Iserson previously wrote YA novel Firecracker.
Other Sony projects currently in the works include Chad Stahelski‘s recently announced adaptation of video game Ghost Of Tsushima, Malamander from Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley, and a bunch of superhero projects coming from the likes of Olivia Wilde, S.J. Clarkson, and J.C. Chandor.
#Peace.Love.TheMentor
