Joe Johnston directed one of the summer's biggest hits, Captain America: The First Avenger, but unlike a lot of big successful tentpole directors, he hasn't been talking a lot about his next project. In fact, we don't even know if he'll return for a Captain America sequel, and given that Cap is tied up in The Avengers, that doesn't seem to be a huge priority. So riding on his success, Johnston is moving on to something completely different. THR reports that Johnston has signed on to Not Safe For Work, a "micro-budgeted thriller" set up at Universal.
It sounds like the kind of scrappy, no-frills thriller a new director might cut his teeth on, but Johnston, with films like Jurassic Park 3 and The Rocketeer behind him, is apparently in the mood to cut back. The story, written by Adam Mason and Simon Boyes, follows a young paralegal who winds up trapped in his office with a killer who has corporate espionage on the brain. NSFW is budgeted at just $2.5 million, which could easily be what they spent on armor for Captain America, but Johnston also gets a cut of the back-end profits if there are any, so you can imagine why he'd move on to something smaller.
I think all of us are a lot more interested in Johnston's work given how successful Captain America was, so no matter how generic NSFW sounds at first, it will probably at least be worth a look. So long as it's not a found-footage horror thing-- we've had plenty of that, thank you-- maybe Johnston will be capable of surprising us once again.
