Hot Off Baby Driver, Edgar Wright’s Grasshopper Jungle Nears Deal
Edgar Wright's Baby Driver was one of our favorite films at SXSW and one of our favorites of the year thus far. Beginning with one of the best set pieces in recent memory, Baby Driver is a super-powered, music-obsessed blast from start to finish. Beginning inside a Subaru that’s been turned into a supercar, we stay with Baby (Ansel Elgort) as he listens to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms,” while inside the bank only a few feet away, the crew of bank robbers he’s driving getaway for are doing their work. When they come bursting out of the bank and hustling back into the car, Baby jacks up the music and takes off, culminating in a car chase so brilliantly executed you can’t believe the movie will ever be able to top it. It does.
So it’s no surprise that producers are very interested in working with Wright on his next project, which could be an adaptation of Andrew Smith’s YA novel “Grasshopper Jungle.” The Hollywood Reporter writes that New Regency has entered into final negotiations to grab the project, winning the deal over Netflix, no less. Wright would direct the film, based on a script from Scott Rosenberg.
THR writes “Grasshopper Jungle mashed up genres as it tackled adolescent love and communication while also serving up apocalyptic action in the form of an unstoppable army of six-foot-tall praying mantises.”
Imagine what fun Wright could have with six-foot-tall praying mantises? The man behind Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Baby Driver has proven there is no genre he can’t master.
