Jason-Reitman-to-Direct-The-PossibilitiesWith production starting last month on his follow-up to Labor Day, Jason Reitman is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down, and has already acquired the rights to a new novel, The Possibilities, attaching himself to direct.

THR reports that Indian Paintbrush and Reitman’s Right of Way Films have optioned The Possibilities, the next novel from Kaui Hart Hemmings, writer of The Descendants. The novel is set to hit stores on 13th May via Simon & Schuster.

Courtesy of Amazon, here’s the synopsis for the upcoming original novel.

A grieving mother struggles to overcome her son’s death, when a strange girl enters her life with a secret that changes them both forever.

Sarah St. John, a single mother, is reeling from grief: Three months ago, her twenty-one-year-old son, Cully, died in an avalanche near their home in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado.

As Sarah tries her best to go through the stages—the anger, the sadness, the letting go—she has trouble keeping her grief at bay and moving on with life. Her father, a retiree who has become addicted to QVC, urges Sarah to go back to work at Breckenridge’s local morning show. Her best friend, a recent divorcee who always manages to say the wrong things, convinces Sarah to sort through Cully’s belongings. Slowly, she comes to terms with a world without the swish of her son’s ski pants or the rolling of his skateboard outside her window. Then a girl named Kit appears on Sarah’s doorstep—and she’s carrying Cully’s child.

The Possibilities is a tender and darkly funny story about the fracturing and healing that takes place within a family after tragedy. Told in Kaui Hart Hemmings’s unsentimental and refreshingly wry style—praised as “audaciously comic” by The New Yorker—this uplifting novel asks difficult questions about what we risk to keep our loved ones close.

Following its early limited release late last year, Reitman’s Labor Day opens wide in the US this Friday, January 31st, before heading across the Atlantic for a 28th March UK release. Opening in somewhat thriller territory, the film soon unravels into some of the finest dramatic work of Reitman’s career, and it sounds like The Possibilities could well have the potential to follow in that vein nicely.

The writer-director recently started filming Men, Women & Children, returning behind the camera with one of his best casts to date, led by Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, Kaitlyn Dever, Dean Norris, Dennis Haysbert, and J.K. Simmons, with Emma Thompson lending her voice as narrator. The film will mark a very welcome return to comedy, and I’m already so looking forward to its arrival.

Whilst we may not have read Hemmings’ upcoming novel yet, Reitman’s interest in it alone is enough to convince me of its brilliance, and its potential to be translated well for the big screen. No word yet on if Reitman will also be penning the script, but having penned the scripts for all his movie adaptations, it’s quite likely that he’ll be writing and directing this one. Here’s to hoping that casting announcements aren’t too far off, because this is definitely one to start getting excited about.