Edgar Wright Locking Down a Deal to Adapt YA Giant Bug Apocalypse Novel ‘Grasshopper Jungle’

While riding the hype wave for his new action movie Baby Driver, Edgar Wright is looking for his next project. And if a deal is made very soon (which, fingers extremely crossed), this next project is going to be an adaptation of Andrew Smith’s super weird 2014 young adult novel Grasshopper Jungle.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Wright is in the process of finalizing a deal with New Regency, one of the studios that was engaged in an all-out bidding war for this movie, including Netflix and Sony. He’s had his eye on the book since 2014, and now that Baby Driver is completed and about to hit theaters, Grasshopper Jungle is getting his full attention.

The book, a Michael L. Printz Award and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner seems like your usual young adult fiction: a boy growing up in a small town in Iowa is coming of age and struggling to deal with his emerging sexuality, as you do. And then he and his friends set loose a plague of six-foot-tall praying mantids — insects known for their ravenous hunger and engaging in some weird behavior during sex. Sure, it’s a metaphor, but one that comes extremely oversized and bearing down on you at top speed, chomping its mandibles in anticipation.

Casting will probably be announced presently. Baby Driver hits theaters June 28.