During our interview with Compliance director Craig Zobel, he mentioned how he made that dark and uncomfortable film to challenge himself as a filmmaker. It was unlike his first feature, The Great World of Sound, and it looks like he's continuing to do something different. Zobel's next project is Z for Zachariah, a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Tobey Maguire. The film is described as:

...a post-apocalyptic story about a girl who lives alone and operates a farm in the last breathable section of a nuclear-ravaged land. Her world is rocked when two strangers stumble in from the forest, and Maguire plays a scientist that she nurses back to health.

The screenplay for Z for Zachariah is by Nizzar Modi,adapted from the Robert C. O'Brien novel of the same name. The screenplay was on The Black List in 2009. (The Black List is a list of unproduced screenplays that a group of 300+ film executives really liked.) If the author sounds familiar, it's because O'Brien -- the pen name of Robert Leslie Conly -- also wrote Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. That book, which you probably read in grade school, was adapted by Don Bluth into the animated film The Secret of NIHM, which you probably watched in grade school. Z for Zachariah was published posthumously in 1974.

Wonder if there'll be a part in Z for Zachariah for Pat Healy, who's starred in Zobel's two other movies.

[Via First Showing]