Sam Mendes Next Film to be a Comedy

According to a recent article in Variety stage and screen director Sam Mendes will next direct an untitled contemporary comedy for Focus Features in March.

The low-budget project, previously titled This Must Be the Place, is based on an original screenplay by husband-and-wife team Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, best known as novelists and magazine editors. "The story follows a young couple's journey around the U.S. as they search for somewhere to put down roots and raise the baby they are expecting. No casting has yet been confirmed.Pic is being produced by Ed Saxon and co-financed by Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf's Big Beach ("Little Miss Sunshine"). Mendes will get a produing credit through his own Neal Street Prods. Focus will co-finance and distribute worldwide," the article explains.

Mendes is currently in post-production for Revolutionary Road starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio which is due for release late in 2008.

The article further explains Mendes originally intended his next directing project to be his first British movie, an adaptation of George Eliot's 19th century masterpiece Middlemarch, which Andrew Davies iswriting for Neal Street. But after so much heavyduty drama, Mendes decided instead that it was time to flex his comedic muscles with This Must Be the Place.