Writer/director Greg Mottola has been tapped to adapt Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugendies’ novel The Marriage Plot.  Mottola is probably best known for helming Superbad, but he also wrote and directed the excellent coming-of-age dramedy Adventureland and helmed Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in 2011’s Paul.  Variety reports that Mottola is in early talks to write the script for the project, and they speculate that Mottola could also direct given that his schedule is clear in the near future.  The story focuses on a love triangle involved three graduates of Brown in the 1980s.  Producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network) acquired the feature rights last November, and it appears he’s eager to get things going.

Mottola most recently directed the pilot and created the visual language for Aaron Sorkin’s highly anticipated new HBO series The Newsroom, also produced by Rudin.  I’m a huge, huge fan of Adventureland, and the kind of “coming-of-age” story that The Marriage Plot involves sounds like it’s right up Mottola’s alley.  Hit the jump for a synopsis of The Marriage Plot.

In Great American novel-adaptation news today, producer Scott Rudin (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) has purchased feature rights to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. The coming-of-age story focuses on a love triangle involving three graduates of Brown in the 1980s. Eugenides previously penned “The Virgin Suicides” and won the Pulitzer for “Middlesex.”

Adapting the best-selling Curtis Sittenfeld novel, American Wife, will be Ron Nyswaner, best known for scripting Philadelphia and The Painted Veil. The novel tracks the First Lady as she struggles with a scandal that threatens to derail her husband’s presidency and their marriage. When it was published in 2009, American Wife drew speculation that its central characters resembled President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. Hit the jump for more on both projects.