Blake Lively is making her feature film directorial debut with an adaptation of the graphic novel Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley (creator), Jason Fischer (drawing assistant), Nathan Fairbairn (color), and Dustin Harbin (lettering).
Seconds is being adapted for Searchlight Pictures from a script penned by Edgar Wright, who adapted the 2010 cult classic Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, starring Brie Larson as Envy Adams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers, Ellen Wong as Knives Chau, and Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim. Wright is producing the new O’Malley adaptation along with Marc Platt. The latter is no stranger to making comic book adaptations, having worked on Josie and the Pussycats (do yourself a favor and watch the astute social commentary and analysis of how capitalism affects film).
Last year, Lively made her directorial debut for Taylor Swift‘s music video “I Bet You Think About Me.” The video earned her nominations at the Country Music Awards for directing and producing. Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, are good friends with the activist musician.
But a friendship with Swift isn’t all the happy couple has in common… Lively and Reynolds met on the set of Green Lantern (see, something good did come out of that movie) and have enjoyed attending comic cons together since 2011. For much of the couple’s decade-long relationship, Lively has always seemingly indulged her hubby’s nerdy ways, but with the announcement that she’s now helming a comic book movie of her own, it’s safe to assume that PokéMOM is just as nerdy as her hubby!
With the Gossip Girl actress’s love of fashion and all things nerd, the first-time feature film director Lively is the perfect fit for O’Malley’s fashion-forward Seconds. Published in 2014 by Random House’s Ballantine Books, Seconds is the story of chef Katie Clay, who lives in the apartment above her restaurant, which she started but did not own because of a bad business decision. The young chef has dreams of starting a second restaurant that can be all hers. But when a mysterious new resident appears in her home, she receives the power to fix her past mistakes by writing them down in a notebook, eating a red-capped mushroom, and falling asleep. As Katie tries to fix more and more mistakes, big and small, she makes new friends, loses old ones, and starts to threaten the multiverse.
