In what will be his first leading role since making a turn as The Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer, Emile Hirsch has signed on to star in the film adaptation of The Motel Life.  Based on the Willy Vlautin novel of the same name, The Motel Life tells the story of two brothers who skip town (that town being Reno) after being involved in a fatal accident.  Hirsch is the first to join the project which currently lacks both a writer and/or director.  That in mind, with production on the film aiming to begin sometime this year, Variety reports that producers Alan and Gabe Polsky may still yet fill the aforementioned positions themselves.

For more on the project, hit the jump to read a synopsis for Vlautin's novel.

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Here's a synopsis for Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life [from Amazon]:

In a gritty debut, Vlautin explores a few weeks in the broken lives of two working-class brothers, Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan, who abruptly ditch their Reno motel after Jerry Lee drunkenly kills a boy on a bicycle in a hit-and-run. The two are case studies in hard luck: their mother died when they were 14 and 16, respectively; their father is an ex-con deadbeat; neither finished high school. Frank has had just one girlfriend, motel neighbor Annie, whose mother is an abusive prostitute. An innocent simpleton, Jerry Lee is left feeling suicidal after the accident, despite his younger brother's efforts (à la Of Mice and Men's Lenny and George) to console him: "It was real quiet, the way he cried," says Frank, "like he was whimpering." On returning to Reno, an eventual reckoning awaits them.