Things are picking up on Jason Reitman’s next film, the Charlize Theron starring, Diablo Cody penned dark comedy “Young Adult.” The LA Times reports that Patton Oswalt has signed on to the film with Patrick Wilson negotiating a deal to join the cast.
There’s no word yet on what roles they will be slotting, but surely, Wilson must be in line to play the male lead, the idealized ex-high school boyfriend (previously linked to Josh Brolin) now married with kids who is pursued by our protagonist: a narcissistic, divorced 30-something author of teen fiction to be played by Theron. The remaining major role in the film then would be Theron’s overweight and physically disabled mid-30-something friend not afraid to call her out on her shit: could this be Oswalt’s part? If so, it will definitely be another acting stretch for the comedian, but as he showed with “Big Fan,” his range is greater than people expect.
Our detailed but not overly spoiler-ish script review further describes the work as Cody’s “most mature effort to date, largely dispensing with the annoying slang she’s been tagged with [and] more complex and emotionally layered than ‘crazy-bitch-stalks-her-old-bf'” logline. It’s “a dark, and messed-up film that’s quite dramatic,” but “also sad and tragic, with a fairly desperate protagonist” that’ll “likely fall under a type of twisted dramedy category.” Needless to say, it’s a project and material that we think has a great potential and we’re excited to see what Reitman does with it.
Lensing is slated to begin this November with Reitman apparently already in the midst of pre-production.