Having become one of the best-known actors working in Hollywood in recent years, with (500) Days of Summer and then Inception introducing him to huge audiences and critical acclaim, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is now set to make his foray into feature directing, already having a number of shorts under his belt.

Deadline report that Gordon-Levitt will make his feature directorial debut from his own script on an as-yet-untitled comedy, for which he’ll be taking the lead alongside Scarlett Johansson. And as you might expect, it sounds brilliant, with Deadline noting that the actor(-director-writer) described the film as,

“a sexy comedy about about a modern-day Don Juan, and his quest to become less of a “selfish dick.” He plays that character, and there is another female lead role that will be filled shortly.”

Nicolas Chartier’s Voltage Pictures (The Hurt Locker, the upcoming Killer Joe) will be financing the film, and Ram Bergman will be producing alongside Gordon-Levitt’s own hitRECord production company, having worked with him on Brick and the upcoming Looper already.

Speaking of the move into the director’s chair, and working from his own script, he says,

“I was a child actor for years and quit at 19, went to school awhile, and a big part of why I came back was that I ultimately wanted to make movies,” Gordon-Levitt said. “I spent a year working with Chris Nolan, Rian Johnson, Steven Spielberg, and I did my best to pay attention. I’ve also been making short films for a long time now, I’ve directed a ton of them, and that is a huge part of why I feel comfortable and confident in this.”

“This is the first time I finished a feature film I thought was good enough to make into a movie,” he said. “I’ve written others, including one mammothy huge sprawling thing that encompasses my entire point of view of everything since I was 20 years old.”

“I wrote myself a helluva role, one that people wouldn’t necessarily thought of me for.”

Now that he’s secured the financing for the film, and with shooting set to begin on 16th April this year, there’s a question of whether or not he’ll still be able to star in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained as planned.

“It will be tricky schedule-wise, but I was honest with Quentin upfront,” Gordon-Levitt said. “He was so cool and encouraging. He said, ‘You strike me as the kind of guy who would want to direct,’ and I took that as high praise.”

With a bit of luck, hopefully it will all work out smoothly. He earned himself high praise for his last role in 50/50, and we can look forward to seeing quite a lot of him this year, starting with The Dark Knight Rises on 20th July, followed by Premium Rush and Looper both on 28th September, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln in December, and hopefully Django Unchained on Boxing Day. And if all goes well, we should be seeing him in what sounds like a brilliant comedy and what will no doubt be a great feature debut for him as a director sometime next year.

Kicking off the casting with Johansson opposite him sounds excellent, and we’ll be seeing her soon in Cameron Crowe’s We Bought A Zoo on 16th March, and then she’ll of course be reprising her role as Black Widow for The Avengers come 27th April. Things are certainly coming together nicely for the new project, and hopefully we’ll have more news to bring you, including the cast of the other female lead, soon.