Lynn Shelton made a real splash last summer by directing Humpday, a low-budget comedy notable for its delicate examinations of the macho one-upmanship than can exist between male friends, not to mention the fact that Shelton is a woman. Since then she's been fielding offers from Hollywood, including a gig directing an episode of Mad Men and the mammoth job of adapting Joshua Ferris's novel Then We Came To Then End. But before that project gets going she's doing a quick return to her indie roots; Deadline reports she's snagged Emily Blunt and Rachel Weisz to star in her next project, which will shoot for just a few weeks starting later this month.

The short schedule partly explains why she was able to cast such notable actresses-- Weisz will be going immediately into filming The Deep Blue Sea, while Blunt will go into production on Rian Johnson's Looper before too long. The film, like Humpday, will be semi-improvised, and it should be very, very interesting to see how trained pros like Weisz and Blunt fit into the mumblecore world of just shooting a scene until it feels right. Jay and Mark Duplass, who have various professional connections to Shelton (Mark starred in Humpday) pulled off something similar by casting Jonah Hill, John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Catherine Keener in their semi-improvised Cyrus, so maybe there's a trend brewing here? Either way, I'm excited to see what Shelton might bring out in the actors, and if she can tackle female relationships with the same skill she did for the men in Humpday, we're all in for something fascinating.