After Edgar Wright‘s disappointing dropping out from Ant-Man a few years back, he’s been out of the public eye for a while. To make up for that, the universe is giving us a double dose upon his return. With Wright’s film, Baby Driver, set to hit cinemas Wednesday, June 28, his next project is already beginning to move ahead rather swiftly.
Wright is in final negotiations to adapt young adult novel, Grasshopper Jungle, with New Regency set to pick up the project, having beaten out such titans as Netflix. Wright will direct, with the team behind the upcoming Jumanji and Venom movies, Scott Rosenberg and Matt Tolmach, writing and producing, respectively.
The novel sounds like perfect fodder for a creative visionary like Wright. Here’s the wacky, enthralling, insert-outlandish-superlative-here synopsis from Amazon:
“Simmering within Ealing, Iowa, is a deadly genetically engineered plague capable of unleashing unstoppable soldiers—six-foot-tall praying mantises with insatiable appetites for food and sex. No one knows it, of course, until Austin and his best friend Robby accidentally release it on the world”.
“An ever-growing plague of giant, flesh-hungry insects is bad enough, but Austin is also up to his eyeballs in sexual confusion—is he in love with Robby or his girlfriend, Shann? Both of them make him horny, but most things do”.
“In an admittedly futile attempt to capture the truth of his history, painfully honest Austin narrates the events of the apocalypse intermingled with a detailed account of the ‘connections that spiderweb through time and place’, leading from his great-great-great-grandfather Andrzej in Poland to Shann’s lucky discovery of an apocalypse-proof bunker in her new backyard”.
Yup. If that doesn’t sound like the perfect source material for Edgar Wright to adapt, I don’t know what is. Despite walking away from potential mainstream success with Ant-Man a few years ago, Wright seems like he’s well set to be right back where he belongs; making some of the most creative, original films of the 21st century and spawning an abundance of rabid new fans.
#Peace.Love.Wright
