Deadline reports that Paul Dano is set to return to the director’s chair with a new “high-concept, original comedy” for Universal Pictures, which will reunite him with Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the directing duo known as the Daniels (Everything Everywhere All at Once).
This is a bit of a reunion as Dano starred alongside Daniel Radcliffe in the Daniels’ Swiss Army Man nearly a decade ago. Dano plays a man stranded on a deserted island who has given up all hope of ever making it home again, but everything changes when he befriends a corpse (Radcliffe) who washes ashore.
Plot details for this new comedy are being kept under wraps, but Dano will write and direct the project. The Daniels will produce through their Playgrounds banner alongside partner Jonathan Wang.
Dano made his directorial debut with Wildlife, a drama about a teenage boy who must deal with his mother’s complicated response after his father temporarily abandons them to take a menial and dangerous job. The film starred Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Ed Oxenbould. The film received rave reviews when it premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, but our own Chris Bumbray wasn’t completely enamoured with the movie.
“Dano’s eye as a director is good, and for a first film it’s assured. I’m sure he made exactly the movie he wanted to make, but it’s hard to sit through if you’re not patient – a thing that’s tougher to be at a fest when you’re seeing four-to-five movies a day,” Bumbray wrote in his review. “Some empathy was needed to make this able to connect to an audience and WILDLIFE has been totally drained of that feeling. Dano has chops as a director, that’s for certain, and it’s well-made, well-acted film, but it’s also slow and a hard watch. I prefer my films a little less clinical, but one can’t deny it does what it set out to do.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.
As for the Daniels, they’re hard at work developing their follow-up to Everything Everywhere All at Once, but the project is still a mystery.
