With How to Train Your Dragon 2 Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature and his nutty FXX comedy Man Seeking Woman in the midst of its first season, January has been a big month for Jay Baruchel. But if the actor has his way, this is only the start of a truly massive year; during an interview with Collider, Baruchel revealed that he’s hoping to make his feature directorial debut on Random Acts of Violence sometime in 2015.
An adaptation of the comic by Jonah Hex scribes Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, Random Acts of Violence will center on two comic-book writers who hit the road to promote their new character Slasherman. When real bodies start piling up in ways that mirror the murderous creation’s work on the page, though, the two realize that Slasherman may have taken on a life of his own.
“My writing partner [Jesse Chabot] and I adapted a graphic novel Random Acts of Violence. We have our financing and our leads, so it looks like I might get to direct that this year as well,” said Baruchel.
The actor also talked about the tone of the adaptation and praised it as one of the best things he’s written:
“It’s kind of a repurposing, a modern take on the slasher genre. It’s not un-meta. Our villain is called ‘the slasherman’ and basically it’s about two guys who write a comic book with this character, and as they’re going out on this press tour they see somebody’s killing people based on the ways that their killer killed in the books. It’s very much about the nature of creativity, the cyclical nature of inspiration, murder as a form of creative expression, and also the wrong artistic journey of how someone can be swallowed whole by their own ideas. It’s fucking crazy and I’m really really proud of it. It’s probably one of the best things we’ve written.”
Baruchel then took the opportunity to brag about all the talent he’s locked down behind the scenes:
“I’m really excited. We’ve got our composer, our editor, our DP. It’s going to blow people’s minds when people see the crew I put together. My friend Jason Eisener, who directed Hobo with a Shotgun, he’s going to cut my movie. He doesn’t cut other people’s movies, he only edits his movies and he’s going to edit mine. Bobby Shore, who shot Goon, is probably going to shoot it. Paul Jones, who did all our makeup effects on Man Seeking Woman – I’m going to guilt trip him into doing it. Matthew Good is going to compose it. It’s just a really cool bunch of people.”
One wouldn’t usually group Baruchel with horror, but his work in This is the End was certainly influenced by that, and talented pros like Shore, Jones and Eisener (whose films always have a distinct feel to them) definitely give me reason to be excited about Random Acts of Violence.
