The Hangover director Todd Phillips is getting serious about branching out.  After primarily helming comedies for most of his career, Phillips recently attached himself to a remake of the crime drama The Gambler.  Now Variety reports that Phillips is set to direct and produce an adaptation of Linwood Barclay’s thriller novel Trust Your Eyes for Warner Bros., with Dan Lin also onboard as a producer.  In the vein of Rear Window, the story centers on a map-obsessed schizophrenic who witnesses a murder in New York City via a GoogleMaps-like program on his computer and tries to convince his older brother to investigate.  The two cross paths with a politically-connected ex-cop and soon realize that they’ve stumbled onto a deadly conspiracy.

Due Date had a few nice dramatic scenes, but we’ve never really seen Phillips tackle the thriller genre before.  The story sounds like a promising cross between Rear Window and David Fincher's The Game, and I’m eager to see Phillips’ take on the material.  The director is currently in the middle of production on The Hangover Part III.  Hit the jump to read a synopsis for Trust Your Eyes.

Here’s a synopsis for Trust Your Eyes:

Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic so affected that he rarely leaves the self-imposed bastion of his bedroom. But with a computer program called Whirl360.com, he travels the world while never so much as stepping out the door. He pores over and memorizes the streets of the world. He examines every address, as well as the people who are frozen in time on his computer screen.

Then he sees something that anyone else might have stumbled upon—but has not—in a street view of downtown New York City: an image in a window. An image that looks like a woman being murdered.

Thomas’s brother, Ray, takes care of him, cooking for him, dealing with the outside world on his behalf, and listening to his intricate and increasingly paranoid theories. When Thomas tells Ray what he has seen, Ray humors him with a half-hearted investigation. But Ray soon realizes he and his brother have stumbled onto a deadly conspiracy.

And now they are in the crosshairs… [Amazon]