Josh Brolin is rumored to be joining Charlize Theron in the reteaming of Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman for “Young Adult,” described by Cody herself as the story of a woman “stalking her high-school sweetheart [that] has elements of humor, but it’s pretty serious and fucked up,”
Brolin is reportedly in line to play the male lead which presumably refers to the idealized ex-high school boyfriend now married with kids who is pursued by our protagonist: a narcissistic, divorced 30-something author of teen fiction to be played by Theron. The remaining major role in the film then would be Theron’s overweight and physically disabled mid-30-something friend not afraid to call her out on her shit who we’ve been campaigning character actor Brad William Henke (“Choke”) for.
We had originally cast the ex-boyfriend with a “generic 30-something handsome, plain jock” which sounds nothing like the talented Brolin but we guess these are the kinds of upgrades and adjustments you can make when you become award season mainstays. That said, Roger Friedman does stress that actor “may join” so there’s probably a few hurdles to jump at the very least before we can anticipate seeing Brolin alongside Theron.
Our detailed but not overly spoiler-ish script review further describes the work as Cody’s “most mature effort to date, largely dispensing with the annoying slang she’s been tagged with [and] more complex and emotionally layered than ‘crazy-bitch-stalks-her-old-bf'” logline. It’s “a dark, and messed-up film that’s quite dramatic,” but “also sad and tragic, with a fairly desperate protagonist” that’ll “likely fall under a type of twisted dramedy category.”
Lensing is slated to begin this November with Reitman apparently already starting pre-production; he tweeted just yesterday that he was “off to make a film” to which Cody replied that she’s “trying to think of something clever to say [in response], but I’m really just so happy.”
