Ned Vizzini is co-authoring a middle-grade series with...

...Chris Columbus?

From EW:

How did you and Ned Vizzini join forces?
With certain film projects and my commitment to a lot of projects at [my production company] 1492, I couldn’t really devote 12 hours a day every day to writing. I wanted to find a co-writer, someone I could bounce ideas back and forth with, and basically bounce chapters back and forth. I brought the idea to my agency and they sent me two writing samples and I sparked to two of them: I read Ned Vizzini’s young adult novel Be More Chill and It’s a Funny Kind of Story, the one that was made into a movie with Zach Galifianakis*. I loved his voice, I loved that he had a real strong ear, I loved his youthfulness, his strong ear for teenage dialogue, and I thought it would be good to partner with someone who has a real sense of contemporary culture and a real imagination. We met once in LA and we got along so well and we started talking about the idea, and we said let’s just do it!

Normally, I'd probably make my I-smell-something-bad face to news of a project like this. But I do love me some Ned Vizzini, so I'm going to reserve judgment until I actually read it.

LOOK AT ME, BEING ALL MATURE AND REASONABLE.

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*Josh and I both really liked that movie.