If you’re going to make a romantic comedy based around someone with obsessive compulsive disorder… well, I guess you can use just about anything as your launch point. As it goes, Variety reports that Jamie Bell (The Adventures of Tintin) will lead Charlie (son of Malcolm) McDowell‘s Fighting Jacob, while Kate Mara (127 Hours) has also been signed as the female lead. (Not to get gossip-y here, but it doesn’t hurt the director is dating her sister.)

The film, written by Justin Lader, follows Jacob ‘The Manic Maniac’ Rosenthal, a young boxer who uses the peculiar aspects of his own OCD to scientifically win fights and advance his career. But this is brought to a screeching halt when his girlfriend (Mara) breaks up with him, leaving the fighter no other option but to “evaluate his many neuroses and whether or not he can be truly happy and a great fighter at the same time.” And, just think: Howard Hughes only built airplanes.

While I’ll go and tip my hat toward Fighting Jacob for approaching a sensitive issue from such a different angle, yours truly still can’t picture how they’d portray a condition as horrifying as OCD from a romantic comedy side of things — even if Jamie Bell and Kate Mara are so pleasant to begin with. For now, let’s be kind (naive?) enough and trust them to handle the matter accordingly.

The Schiff Company and Fade to Black Films are producing; production will commence in the summer.

Are you liking the vibe of Fighting Jacob?