1990s romantic comedy queen Meg Ryan appears to be settling behind the camera these days. She recently made her directorial debut with Ithaca, a drama based on the novel The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, and may have found a follow-up with the romantic comedy The Book, which would find Ryan collaborating with writer Delia Ephron.
Set in the publishing world, The Book may be Ryan’s directorial follow-up. The film doesn’t appear to have distribution set up but Ephron (the sister of the late Nora Ephron) may be coming aboard to pen the feature. Ephron’s writing credits include The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), Bewitched (2005), You’ve Got Mail (1998) and Hanging Up (2000); the latter two starred Ryan. Nora Ephron, who passed away in 2012, helped sculpt Ryan’s dominance of the romantic comedy genre having written the classic When Harry Met Sally… (1989) and both wrote and directed Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail.
While no casting or start dates have been mentioned yet for The Book, Ithaca has been making the festival rounds and may be coming to theaters sometime later this year depending on if the film gets picked up for distribution. The film is a coming of age story starring Ryan’s son Jack Quaid (The Hunger Games), Hamish Linklater (The Big Short), Sam Shepard (August: Osage County), Gabriel Basso (The Kings of Summer) and Ryan’s cohort Tom Hanks; Hanks also serves as one of Ithaca‘s producers.