A robot road movie is in the works, with the director of Baby Driver behind the wheel.
Hugo Award–nominated director Edgar Wright is attached to a movie version of English author Simon Stephenson’s upcoming debut SF novel Set My Heart to Five, according to an announcement by HarperCollins imprint Hanover Square Press.
The novel, set in 2054, focuses on a character named Jared, who’s described by the publisher as “an android who undergoes an emotional awakening and embarks on a quest to convince humans that he and his kind should be permitted to feel.” After he’s exposed to 1980s and ’90s movies, he goes on “an unforgettable adventure across the West Coast of America, after he determines to write a film script that will change the world.”
Production companies Working Title Films and Complete Fiction Pictures have optioned the film rights to the novel, and Stephenson himself is set to pen the film’s screenplay. The book will be published in the U.K. this summer by HarperCollins imprint 4th Estate, and in September in the United States.
English director Wright is perhaps best known for directing the 2004 zombie-comedy, Shaun of the Dead, and the aforementioned 2018 crime thriller, Baby Driver. He also received a Hugo Award nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation for directing and co-writing the 2011 film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, based on a series of graphic novels by Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O’Malley. He also directed the upcoming film Last Night in Soho, starring Thomasin McKenzie, who memorably appeared in last year’s Jojo Rabbit, and Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred as the title character in the recent film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
