Back in 2006, still glowing from the success of Little Miss Sunshine, co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris announced their intention to return to a previously touted project, adapting Tom Perrotta’s comedy novel The Abstinence Teacher. Now, after years of waiting, it looks like it might finally hit the screen, having nabbed Steve Carell and Sandra Bullock to star.
Bullock is apparently up for the main role, Ruth Ramsey, the sexual education teacher at the local high school in the beautiful small town US community of Stonewood High. But there’s a problem: her breezy attitude to the love connection is causing problems for some of the more conservative inhabitants in town.
Carell, of course, is no stranger to the world of Dayton and Faris, having starred in Sunshine. If the film actually gets moving this time, he’ll be slotted in as Tim Mason, a former hard-partying type who hit the bottom of the (beer) barrel and has since been “saved” by the local evangelical Christian church. He’s now Ruth's daughter’s soccer coach, and while Ruth and Tim are initially at cross points when it comes to the school’s policy, a controversy on the sports field draws them closer together.
With two such big stars attached, you might think the film will shove into first place on the directors’ schedule. But wait! Not only will they have to figure out some time in the two busy actors’ plans, but the pair already has another film on their to do list: Will, written by Demetri Martin with Zach Galifianakis and Paul Rudd attached, which has been percolating for a while now. It hit some studio trouble, but according to executive producer Adam McKay, might now go ahead.
With luck, one of these two will move forward fast and Dayton/Faris might actually get to make something new.