Jonah Hill certainly has come a long way from small roles in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and **I Heart Huckabees **– he’s the co-writer and producer behind 21 Jump Street and is now in talks with Sony about directing his first film, based on Oren Uziel script The Kitchen Sink.
An entry on the 2010 Black List, Sink doesn’t automatically strike us as the sort of film most filmmakers chose to tackle as their first stab at the big screen (unless your name is Edgar Wright and you have a little more experience behind the camera). Despite the title, it’s not a low-key Mike Leigh-style drama, but an action drama about a high school kid who must join forces with zombies and vampires to fight off an alien invasion. Yes, in this case, the title refers to throwing a load of popular genre concepts into one screenplay.
It helps, of course, that Hill has a solid relationship with Sony beyond Jump Street: he starred in Superbad and recently worked on Moneyball with Brad Pitt.
Former Sony chief Matt Tolmach is the man who nabbed the script, and told Deadline while he jumped on it: “These groups have to band together, suppress the urge to kill each other, and it becomes thematically the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That makes it different than your usual zombie, vampire, or alien movie. I love high school movies, and sparked to the authenticity of these characters.”
Hill’s certainly got the comic chops. Now it remains to be seen if he can convince the executives – and the world – that he can call the shots.