Jason Reitman is set to direct Juno, a coming of age comedy which is said to be in the vein of Napoleon Dynamite.

I first heard of Jason back in 2000, his 16 minute short film In God We Trust hit AtomFilms. When I watched it, I knew this kid had a future. If you have a spare 16 minutes, you can check it out at this link.

Earlier this year, Reitman released his feature film debut Thank You for Smoking, which earned him critical acclaim.

The screenplay is the original creation of Diablo Cody, author of Candy Girl : A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. Production Weekly describes the film as "a darkly humorous look at the difficult choices facing a pregnant teen Juno McGuff, who gets pregnant during a single sexual encounter with her best friend Paulie Bleeker, she decides to adopt the child out to desperately hopeful Vanessa Loring and her husband Mark, who is ambivalent about his marriage, not to mention the prospect of being a dad. During her pregnancy, Juno develops a crush on Mark — but ultimately realizes that her true love is the ever loyal Paul, whose affections she has previously spurned."

Brad Silberling (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events) reportedly left the project due to creative differences regarding casting.

Production is tentatively slated for early January, shooting for a late 2007 release. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Reitman took the film to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival as part of the Premieres program.