DeWitt, Krasinski, and Thirlby in the Running for Ry Russo-Young’s ‘Nobody Walks’

The indie dramedy/mumblecore revolution keeps sailing on with word that Rosemarie DeWitt, John Krasinski, and Olivia Thirlby are in negotiations to star in Ry Russo Young’s new film Nobody Walks. Jonathan Schwartz is producing, who’s coming off of a big Sundance success in Like Crazy, which took home the big prize. When one considers that the film was co-written by Lena Durham (who took a cyber-beating earlier this month when her Tiny Furniture was more-or-less confirmed for a Criterion DVD), this really begins to take on the look of some sort of manifesto against the genre’s detractors. Russo-Young’s previous film You Wont Miss Me premiered at Sundance and had a stint at SXSW, was moderately successful critically, and really put Stella Schnabel on the map (though, Miral might have just undone that). The film was intended to go behind the camera in Los Angeles by early 2011, but, likely in an effort to get her cast just right, it has been held up a bit and won’t start filming until the end of May.

Gist: The film looks at a week in the lives of a philistine couple whose peaceful lives get thwarted upon the arrival of an artist who is staying with them. The artist is listed as male, so I’m assuming that role will go to Krasinski – quite a role change from his profession in The Office! This outsider-disrupts-the-household scenario gives off Greenberg vibes, though we’re anticipating a raw, hip feel to it to bring the content to it target generation.

Worth Noting: Russo-Young and Dunham developed the project at the 2010 Sundance Screenwriters Lab, which Russo-Young called “an awesome experience.” Among the 12 films also in the 2010 Screenwriters Lab class was Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, which was just selected for the 2011 Un Certain Regard roster.

Do We Care? Though she worked on a pilot and other projects, This is Lena Dunham’s first “film” writing project since Tiny Furniture, and it’ll be interesting to see how both her and Russo-Young’s styles have responded after feedback on their breakthrough films. Both are talented to some capacity, but have received some brash criticism at times for adhering to a youthful genre that happens to be flooding the Sundance walls, becoming its own stereotype. The experienced cast will bring them a wider audience, so this could be a very telling project for the trajectory of Russo-Young’s career.