I've been a huge fan of Zoe Kazan for years, as she always seems to be the best part of every movie she's a part of. A couple of years ago, her performance in The Exploding Girl
ranked as one of the finest I saw of the entire year. While her career mostly leaned towards indies, she's had her share of mainstream work as well such as It's Complicated
and Revolutionary Road
. Recently she's made the jump into screenwriting, crafting the script for He Loves Me, a weird meta dramatic comedy to be directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris(Little Miss Sunshine
). The three have managed to pull together a quirky cast that will remind many of Dayton and Faris's hit indie film. Kazan's boyfriend, Paul Dano will star as Calvin, a young writer who found success early but has started to taper off. As a means of breaking his writer's block, he's advised to start writing the woman he thinks will love him, and ends up willing her into existence. Think Weird Science
meets Adaptation
. Annette Bening is already on board as Calvin's mom, and now 24 Frames reports that Antonio Banderas, Steve Coogan, True Blood star Deborah Ann Woll, Elliott Gould, Chris Messina(Devil
), and Aasif Mandvi(The Daily Show
) have all signed on.Woll will play Calvin's ex-girlfriend. Gould is his therapist, with Messina as Calvin's brother. Mandvi is Calvin's agent, while Banderas could actually be funny again as Bening's boyfriend. Coogan could have the best role of them all, as a fellow writer and Calvin's literary rival.
That's quite a line up for a pair of directors with one film under their belt and a fledgling screenwriter. But hey, it sounds great and I'm looking forward to this big time. He Loves Me is currently shooting in LA, so hopefully we'll get a firm release date soon.
