It will come as no surprise that Bryce Dallas Howard’s first project as a screenwriter will be produced by Ron Howard’s Imagine entertainment set-up. To give her the benefit of the doubt, let’s just assume anybody would have snapped the screenplay right up, its just that Dad and company were obviously always going to be given first refusal. The Hollywood Reporter describe the film The Originals as “an ensemble film about a group of twenty somethings”, so perhaps Bryce even wrote herself a role. I mean - why not? In her shoes, I think I would. Details on the creepy-sounding premise after the break.

According to the report, the 20 something characters at the heart of the story have been separated since their youth, where they were linked by one teacher who “shaped their childhoods”. When this teacher falls into a “mysterious” coma, the group reconvene for a weekend in New York. Sleepers meets Coma meets Never Let Me Go meets The Not-So-Big Chill? Probably not.

Apparently, Ms. Howard conceived the film as an exploration of “quarter life crisis issues”. She recruited Dan Charbeneau as co-writer and for the last couple of years, they’ve been toiling away. Indeed, according to the Hollywood Reporter, she was also writing during labor:

The two have been working on the script for the past couple of years, as Howard shot Terminator Salvation and gave birth to her son Theodore.

Impressive. At least we’ll know when she wrote the scene with people screaming “Push”, “Breathe” and “Just give me the *&^%ing drugs”.

There is, of course, some speculation that Ron Howard will direct, with The Hollywood Reporter saying that it’s on his list of potential next projects, alongside a remake of Colossus: The Forbin Project and various other Universal-bound pictures. If he doesn’t, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see Bryce take up the reigns herself. Her previous collaboration with Dan Charbeneau spawned the short film Orchids which was, I believe, her directorial debut. If you want to check it out, then here it is: