Chris McCoy kind of got the raw end of the deal when Marvel Studios hired James Gunn to direct Guardians of the Galaxy. While McCoy had originally been hired to pen the script for the comic book movie, with the announcement about Gunn’s hiring came news that he would also be working on the script, presumably cancelling out the work that McCoy had done (much like what happened to Zak Penn’s script when Joss Whedon came in for The Avengers). The good news is that McCoy seems to have rebounded with a new project.
Variety has gotten word that McCoy’s script for a travel dramedy titled Year Abroad is now in development over at Strange Weather Films. The original script follows a man who gets dumped by his girlfriend and decides to finally go on a trip to Europe – a trip he promised himself when he was 18. The protagonist ends up meeting “a Brit who spends his life traveling to strange places” and ends up traveling under his wing. McCoy reportedly went to Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and the Czech Republic while researching the screenplay.
McCoy has developed a reputation for writing lauded scripts that never end up getting made. In his career the writer has finished three scripts, titled Get Back, Good Looking, and Good Kids, and all three were featured on the Black List (the annual list of the most popular unproduced screenplays in Hollywood), but none of them have ever made it into the production stage. He also sold a romantic comedy to Disney last year.
