Like so many actors before him, Jonah Hill is a starving artist who wants to express himself behind the camera as well as in front of it. He’s poised to make his feature directorial debut with Mid 90s, a coming-of-age tale based on a spec script he wrote himself. And though Hill build his career as an actor, the two-time Oscar-nominee has no plays to star in the upcoming feature.
Though details are skim at the moment, Deadline reports the story will center around a boy who learns life lessons alongside his skateboard crew while growing up in Los Angeles during the Clinton years. There’s no announcement yet regarding when he hopes to get this one in front of cameras, but Scott Rudin, Eli Bush and A24, the modern gods of mid-budget intellectual cinema, are backing the project, so it’s already got some serious clout. Expect this one to have some hustle in its step once Hill sends in his final draft of the screenplay.
While Hill has had no experience as a filmmaker, he previously directed a music video in 2011 for Sara Bareilles’ “Gonna Get Over You.” He also has been writing his own plays since college and has story credits under both 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street. Oh yes, and he helped create the short-lived animated sitcom Allen Gregory too, if you remember that one at all. Hill has made no secret about his love of cinema, particularly Martin Scorsese’s films, and was once attached to direct The Kitchen Sink in 2011, which eventually became last year’s Freaks of Nature.
Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before it found himself behind the lens. Hopefully, he learned a thing a two working with the likes of Scorsese, Bennett Miller, Jay & Mark Duplass, Judd Apatow, Joel & Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino, David Gordon Green and David O. Russell as he makes his first go-around behind the director’s chair.
Meanwhile, as an actor, Hill will soon be seen in War Dogs and heard in Sausage Party on August 19 and August 12, respectively. It was also recently announced that he’ll make his television series debut with Maniac, the Netflix-distributed, Cary Fukunga-directed (True Detective season one, Beasts of No Nation) dark comedy that’ll reunite him with his Superbad co-star Emma Stone.
