SAM MENDES/WHAT HE DID NEXT!

Actually, no one knows for now. Mendes has started on a new film but it is so far untitled, which tells you something surely, but it is hard to say what exactly. Oh, why do they have such trouble coming up with a defining few words?

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A few things are certain.

One, the project marks a huge departure from most of his previous work and particularly a departure from his last (forthcoming) feature, Revolutionary Road.

This new project – oh, let’s call it Sunshine, for now – is contemporary and a comedy. So that is promising.

The premise: another young couple, here sweet and expectant - John Krasinski (fresh from shining in Leatherheads) and Maya Rudolph, in a first major role - are scouring the country for a place to settle and raise their soon-to-arrive child.

A good, caring idea on the face of it but not likely to end in success, given the number of places to check out in America.

Anyway, as their college pal Toni Collette opines, any child of this somewhat oddball couple is likely to be dysfunctional no matter where they end up.

So why call the film Sunshine, even provisionally?

Well, it is produced by the people behind breakout comedy Little Miss Sunshine. That is reason for hope.

And it is written by celebrated author Dave Eggers, together with his wife, Vendela Vida, and they say it will be funny, even "edgy and breathtakingly funny", so a few laughs at least are a given.

Besides, after all the darkness Mendes has been through, from the bitterness of American Beauty to the murders on The Road To Perdition and the mayhem of Jarhead, he deserves some Sunshine surely.

Posted April 22, 2008.