It feels nice to be an Edgar Wright fan right now.  Sure, it would have been nice to see his version of Ant-Man, but we’re getting the 100% Wright movie Baby Driver in its place.  That film already promises to revisit the fertile creative environment that allowed him to make Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End.  And now we get to see what his stab at YA filmmaking looks like in addition to that.

Don’t worry though, it’s not typical YA (even if it were, Wright wouldn’t execute it in a typical manner).  He’s been brought onboard to direct Grasshopper Jungle for Sony.  I haven’t read this book but it sounds nuts in a good way.  Because it literally has giant grasshoppers.  Hit the jump for more on Edgar Wright directing Grasshopper Jungle.

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Per Deadline, Wright will tackle the film, described as Stand By Me meets Attack The Block, after he finishes up Baby Driver.  The script was written by Scott Rosenberg and is based on the book by Andrew Smith.

Here’s the synopsis for the book:

Simmering within Ealing, Iowa, is a deadly genetically engineered plague capable of unleashing unstoppable soldiers—six-foot-tall praying mantises with insatiable appetites for food and sex. No one knows it, of course, until Austin and his best friend Robby accidentally release it on the world. An ever-growing plague of giant, flesh-hungry insects is bad enough, but Austin is also up to his eyeballs in sexual confusion—is he in love with Robby or his girlfriend, Shann? Both of them make him horny, but most things do. In an admittedly futile attempt to capture the truth of his history, painfully honest Austin narrates the events of the apocalypse intermingled with a detailed account of the “connections that spiderweb through time and place,” leading from his great-great-great-grandfather Andrzej in Poland to Shann’s lucky discovery of an apocalypse-proof bunker in her new backyard.

Look at that synopsis again.  If there was ever a YA book for Wright, this is it.