If you’re not yet familiar with the name Chris McCoy (not the football player), chances are that will change very soon. In addition to providing rewrites for James Gunn’s upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy and developing Year Abroad, three of McCoy’s original screenplays have already earned the distinction of making the Black List: Get Back (optioned by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment), which made the 2007 list; Good Looking (optioned by Double Feature Films and DreamWorks), which made the 2009 list; and Good Kids, which made the 2011 list. On top of that, his book Scurvy Goonda was published by Knopf in 2009, and he’s scheduled to produce another book for the company, The Prom-Goer’s Interstellar Companion, which will hit shelves in 2015.
Meanwhile, a new report from Deadline states that McCoy is now venturing on his first foray into feature-length directing, with none other than his most recent Black List-certified script, Good Kids. Following “four overachieving high school students on Cape Cod who reinvent themselves after graduation when the summer people come to town,” the report also informs us that Nicholas Braun (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Kitchen Sink) and Jane Levy (effective in this year’s Evil Dead remake) are set to star in the film.
Depth of Field, the production company of Chris and Paul Weitz, is handling the project. (Frequent collaborator Andrew Miano is also on board to produce.) In recent years, the Weitz brothers (who co-directed 2002’s About a Boy) have used the company’s label on several of their own films, such as A Better Life, Being Flynn, and Admission, making this the first Depth of Field project in a while that was directed by an outsider. Like most others who have read his work, they must be confident in the potential McCoy has showed on the page.
Have you read any of McCoy’s scripts? How do you think he’ll transition into directing?