Attack the Block director Joe Cornish is now set to direct an adaptation of Royden Lepp’s sci-fi novel Rust for 20th Century Fox.  Cornish made his feature directorial debut with last year’s excellent sci-fi pic Attack the Block, and now it looks like one of his future projects will be a feature iteration of the Lepp’s E.T.-style story.  The project has been in development for a while, as Fox set The Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna to pen the screenplay last July.

The story centers on a boy with a jetpack named Jet Jones who crashes into a family farm in the American heartland after being chased by a decommissioned war robot. The eldest son of the family that owns the farm not only has to work to keep the farm alive during the war, but now must deal with the mysterious jetpack boy whose past secrets may or may not be the key to the family’s survival.  Hit the jump for more.

20^th Century Fox has acquired the screen rights to Royden Lepp’s graphic novel Rust. Deadline reports that the studio has set screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) to pen the script. The story centers on a boy with a jetpack named Jet Jones who crashes into a family farm in the American heartland after being chased by a decommissioned war robot. The eldest son of the family that owns the farm not only has to work to keep the farm alive during the war, but now must deal with the mysterious jetpack boy whose past secrets may or may not be the key to the family’s survival.

Brosh McKenna most recently scripted Douglas McGrath’s I Don’t Know How She Does It and Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo. Simon Kinsberg (X-Men: First Class) is producing the Rocketeer-esque adventure flick.