Iron Man Director Favreau Set to Film About A Boy Pilot

Jon Favreau, who directed Iron Man and Iron Man 2 before moving on to television where he's working on Revolution with Star Wars Episode VII director J.J. Abrams, will get behind the camera for the pilot episode of a new NBC sitcom based on Nick Hornby's bestselling novel About a Boy. Deadline describes the premise as following "the relationship between a bachelor man-child and the young boy who moves in next door with his kooky single mother." That sounds like the series will run a lot less dark than Hornby's book, or even the 2002 film based on it. That film starred Hugh Grant and Toni Collette and was directed by American Pie's Weitz brothers. The series hasn't yet been cast. The producer, Jason Katims, has experience with similar projects, having turned the feature films Parenthood and Friday Night Lights into critically-acclaimed TV series. Hornby's work has been adapted to stage and screen before, as well; his novel High Fidelity was a movie with John Cusack, and briefly a Broadway play, while his autobiographical novel Fever Pitch has been adapted to film twice--once in the U.K. as a soccer movie starring Colin Firth and once in the U.S. as a baseball film with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon. In 2003, Fox ordered a pilot based on About a Boy, written by Matthew Carlson, directed by The Office's Ken Kwapis and starring Patrick Dempsey.