The highlight of Toronto International Film Festival was Richard Ayoade‘s directorial debut Submarine. Produced by Ben Stiller, the coming-of-age comedy was wickedly funny with a definitive style to match. You can check out my full review here and I plan on catching it again when it screens at Sundance Film Festival this week. We now have news of our director’s possible follow-ups.
First up, The Playlist reports Ayoade is interesting in directing the 2008 Black List script The Apostles Of Infinite Love, written by Victoria Strouse. He would be re-teaming with Stiller, as the project is set up at his Red Hour Films company. The film follows “an upper class dysfunctional New York family who learn their youngest daughter has joined a suicide cult in the Midwest. So they recruit a cult deprogrammer and go on the road to save her while both parents and siblings confront their issues with one another. It centers on the three siblings who get in over their heads when they attempt to save the fourth from the cult and apparently early offers are already being made to notable actors.”
The next project of interest comes from a report in The Guardian. He is also working on an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Double. The original novel is “a psychological study of a bureaucrat whose alter ego overtakes his life,” but Ayoade aims to make it funny. He explains: “[it’s] a sort of doppelgänger tale, and funny, I think. Very funny. Dostoevsky never finished it to his satisfaction, which is somewhat…so yes, we’re going to dust that off. We’ll do what Fyodor couldn’t.”
Submarine hits theaters this March in the UK and the Weinstein Co. has picked it up for a summer release here in the US.
Which of these projects are you more interested? Are you excited for Submarine?