TriStar Pictures has tapped British director Ben Taylor to helm the romantic comedy The Rosie Project.
Based on Graeme Simsion’s best-selling novel of the same name, which has sold 3.5 million copies worldwide, the project is a high priority for Hannah Minghella’s TriStar label. Taylor, who directed all three seasons of the Amazon breakout comedy Catastrophe, will take the reins on the romantic comedy that previously had Richard Linklater and Jennifer Lawrence attached.
Adapted by Simsion with a subsequent draft by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (The Fault in Our Stars), the film centers on Don Tillman, a brilliant but socially awkward genetics professor who reads an article that claims married men have a longer life expectancy than single men and comes to the logical conclusion that he should get married. But logic and romance are uncommon bedfellows, and Don’s quest is complicated when he starts working with the brilliant but unpredictable Rosie Jarman.
The search is on to cast the two lead roles.
Michael Costigan (Ghost in the Shell) and Matt Tolmach (The Amazing Spider-Man) are producing. Minghella and Nicole Brown are overseeing for TriStar.
The Rosie Project would mark Taylor’s feature directing debut. His TV credits include the ABC pilot Raised by Wolves and the HBO series Divorce, starring Sarah Jessica Parker.
Taylor is repped by WME and by Amanda Davis at Curtis-Brown in the U.K.
