Seeing as he’s proved himself time and time again as an onscreen performer, now is, in some way, as good a time as any for Jason Bateman to take up feature directing. Well, when he gets those new Arrested Development episodes in the can.

Over at Variety, we’ve heard that Bateman is hoping to take that big screen plunge with Bad Words, an indie comedy that he, at the very least, will produce through DumbDumb; Richard Kelly‘s Darko Entertainment are planning to finance Andrew Dodge‘s Black List screenplay, which follows “a bitter thirty-something (Bateman)” that takes advantage of a loophole that allows him to compete in a national children’s spelling bee. This selfish act notwithstanding, the protagonist sees some growth by way of interactions with a female reporter and one of his competitors, an Indian child that he “exposes to the wilder side of life.”

It’s bit of a deviation for Bateman, then — so long as you, like I, generally find his characters to be amiable, even when they try to kill their boss — and if Bad Words has him trying out something new in the meantime, there’s no perfect place to kick things off. While, yes, he’s directed for TV in the past, including a few Development episodes, this is a whole different ballgame and a pretty big leap. Better yet that the funny-sounding project has a good pedigree behind it already, what with the Black List designation and all.

How do you feel about Bateman going into directing?