Marvel, who needs ’em? While exiting “Ant-Man,” which he had been developing for years, was likely a hard decision and tough blow for Edgar Wright, he’s picked himself up and moved on pretty quickly. Earlier this week it was revealed that the filmmaker’s long-gestating “Baby Driver” was on the fast track to be his next film, and now he’s lined up yet another gig, one with a different kind of insect connection.
Deadline reports that Sony have tapped Wright to helm Andrew Smith‘s YA novel “Grasshopper Jungle,” which they describe as “Stand By Me” meets “Attack The Block.” Scott Rosenberg (“Con Air,” “High Fidelity“) is penning the script for this unusual coming-of-age tale, and we’ll let the Booklist synopsis do the talking:
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.
It sounds like a pretty intriguing blend of genre elements and basically the sort of thing that’s in Wright’s wheelhouse. An interesting one to have on the backburner as the director prepares to make “Baby Driver” next.