Actor Joseph Cross (Running with Scissors), now director and landed film rights to direct the movie adaptation of the best-selling novel The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish. Cross will also be producing the film through his company, Moving Image Productions, with Lucas Evans. There are not actors attached to the movie yet.

Cross told Variety in a statement, “It is an honor to be entrusted with Louise’s brilliant, dark, twisty, suspenseful and utterly disturbing new novel. Her characters are meticulously crafted so as to be entirely relatable, which makes the novel’s cataclysmic finale all the more affecting. I am very much looking forward to our collaboration.”

Candlish’s novel is a success in the U.K., but it won’t be released in the U.S. until July 2021 by book publisher Simon & Schuster. The story is about Jamie, who is rattled by a horrific experience on the commuter train. Jamie journeys to work on a river bus with his younger neighbor Kit. It’s a lifestyle adjustment that he desperately needs until one morning, and when Kit doesn’t turn up for the boat, Jamie is met at his stop by the police. Melia, Kit’s wife, filed a report of him missing, and the police said that another passenger saw Jamie and Kit quarreling on the boat home the night before. The police believe that Jamie has a reason to want Kit dead, but Jamie denies it because he and Kit were friends. Jaime begins to question who this other passenger is pointing the finger at him? What do they know about his life? “No, whatever danger followed him home last night, he is innocent, totally innocent. Isn’t he?”

Cross is starring in David Fincher’s Mank that will be released in theaters on Dec 4. He is also currently acting in Paul Thomas Anderson’s next film. His directorial debut was with a coming-of-age drama Summer Night in 2019.