/Film is reporting that Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) has just made his upcoming slate a bit busier as his production company Right of Way Films has optioned the movie rights to Saturday Night Live scribe Simon Rich‘s novel Elliot Allagash. Rich has agreed to adapt his own novel for the screen, and while Reitman has expressed his intent to produce the film, his eventual directing contribution is still in question.
It is rather well-known that Reitman is currently adapting Joyce Maynard‘s novel Labor Day, and the emotion he has expressed for that material leads me to believe that he will direct that one as well, although no official statement has been made. Reitman‘s directing involvement with Whispers in Bedlam (a film about a football player who receives experimental surgery) and Bonzai Shadowhands (the Rainn Wilson-scripted ninja movie) is also unknown.
The cloudiness of Reitman‘s future projects makes it difficult to predict whether or not he will direct the Elliot Allagash adaptation. We do know for sure that he has a producing credit on two upcoming films (Jeff Who Lives at Home, Ceremony), but both of those are currently in post-production, meaning that most of Reitman‘s involvement is probably finished.
It’s great to see Reitman try and expand his filmography, but personally, I would prefer to see him take two or three years to adapt and direct a film rather than producing multiple films each year. We’ll have to see how it all shakes out, but for right now, all we know is that Reitman intends to produce an adaption of Elliot Allagash. The novel’s official plot description reads as follows:
Simon Rich dazzled readers with his absurdist sense of humor in his hilarious collections Ant Farm and Free-Range Chickens. Now comes Rich’s rollicking debut novel, which explores the strangest, most twisted, and comically fraught terrain of them all: high school.
Seymour Herson is the least popular student at Glendale, a private school in Manhattan. He’s painfully shy, physically inept, and his new nick-name, “chunk style,” is in danger of entering common usage. But Seymour’s solitary existence comes to a swift end when he meets the new transfer student: Elliot Allagash, evil heir of America’s largest fortune. Elliot’s rampant delinquency has already gotten him expelled from dozens of prep schools around the country. But despite his best efforts, he can’t get himself thrown out of Glendale; his father has simply donated too much money. Bitter and bored, Elliot decides to amuse himself by taking up a challenging and expensive new hobby: transforming Seymour into the most popular student in the school.
An unlikely friendship develops between the two loners as Elliot introduces Seymour to new concepts, like power, sabotage, and vengeance. With Elliot as his diabolical strategist and investor, Seymour scores a spot on the basketball team, becomes class president, and ruthlessly destroys his enemies. Yet despite the glow of newfound popularity, Seymour feels increasingly uneasy with Elliot’s wily designs. For an Allagash victory is dishonorable at its best, and ruinous at its worst. Cunningly playful and wickedly funny, Elliot Allagash is a tale about all of the incredible things that money can buy, and the one or two things that it can’t.
Do you want to see Reitman direct Elliot Allagash?
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