Young Adult is definitely one of the lower-budget films I’m looking forward to most next year. The film sees director Jason Reitman teaming back up with writer Diablo Cody after their incredibly successful work on Juno together in 2007, which won Cody her Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and Reitman his first nomination for Best Director.

The first image of Charlize Theron as the lead, Mavis Gray, has now been released, /Film report, and it gives a great first taste.

Cody’s two features so far, Juno and Jennifer’s Body, show that she’s capable of a pretty diverse range of writing, and Young Adult is said to be an entirely different film again, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Reitman is an excellent director, who I personally think deserved to win at least one of his three nominations for Up in the Air at last year’s Oscars, and all his three films are absolutely terrific. Working with Cody again for Young Adult definitely promises good things for the film.

“Synopsis: Academy Award® winner Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a writer of teen literature who returns to her small hometown to relive her glory days and attempt to reclaim her happily married high school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson). When returning home proves more difficult than she thought, Mavis forms an unusual bond with a former classmate (Patton Oswalt) who hasn’t quite gotten over high school, either.”

Just as Cody and Reitman are brilliant behind the camera, so is Theron in front of it, and I can’t wait to see her lead this. J.K. Simmons, who starred as Ellen Page’s father in Juno, will be working on this project too as the film’s narrator, and he’s certainly got a great voice for it. That it even has a narrator suggests it really is likely to be another very different film from Cody, and its 10th February release next year is something to get excited about.

This first picture of Theron from the film seems to show the two sides of her character, the adult and the youngster. For the latter, we have the Hello Kitty tee that she’s wearing, appealing to the writer of teen literature in her. And for the former, we have the token handbag-sized dog, coupled with the Victoria’s Secret bag atop her suitcase. As usual, click to make it go big.