In the years since 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine came out, co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris haven’t been sitting on their laurels listening to people tell them how much they liked the film, they’ve been busy shooting adverts and trying to set up new projects. Which, even with a movie as well-regarded and successful as Sunshine, isn’t an easy proposition. But now it looks like they’re finally on to something, and they’ve recruited Paul Dano, one of their acting alumni, to star in He Loves Me.
It’ll follow a young novelist (Dano) who hits it big early in his writing career but then begins to have serious problems with writer’s block. So when he’s advised to break out of the rut by writing about the woman he thinks will love him, he ends up making her real, and meeting her.
The directors don’t have Michael Arndt on script duty this time (since scooping an Oscar for Sunshine, he’s been a little busy, not least with Pixar), but instead found what they were looking for in a script by Dano’s real-life girlfriend, It's Complicated's Zoe Kazan, who will also play the woman of his dreams on screen.
"The plot couldn't be more different than Little Miss Sunshine," producer Albert Berger tells the LA Times. "But in terms of a movie with comedy, with heart and with strong characters, I think it's very similar." Dayton and Faris are now developing the script with Kazan and are already looking for other actors, along with that all-important aspect: the money to make the thing.