MENDES TO SHOOT COMEDY FOR FOCUS; KRASINSKI, RUDOLPH RUMORED TO STAR (VAR, HI)

By Nancy Vialatte

Sam Mendes has set his next project at a look at the American family in a comedy written by Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida. The untitled project, which Focus Features is co-financing and distributing, is rumored to star John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, although casting has yet to be confirmed.

The story follows a couple, pregnant with their first child, as they travel across America looking for the ideal place to settle down.

Produced by Ed Saxon and co-financed by Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf�s Big Beach, the film will also provide Mendes with a producing credit through his own Neal Street Prods.

This marks Mendes' first film comedy and the first he has made for a studio specialty division. He's currently in post-production on the 1950s drama �Revolutionary Road,� starring Kate Winslet, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Shooting is expected to begin in March on the low-budget film which Variety notes was previously titled �This Must Be the Place.�

Mendes originally intended his next directing project to be his first British movie, an adaptation of George Eliot�s �Middlemarch,� which Andrew Davies is writing for Neal Street. But after so much heavy-duty drama, Mendes decided instead that it was time to flex his comedic muscles, says Variety.