He made his cinematic bones with dramatic films such as American Beauty and Road to Perdition, but director Sam Mendes wasn't born without a funny bone, and he's about to prove it.

Variety reports that Mendes has signed on to direct "an untitled contemporary comedy" for Focus Features this spring. Previously titled This Must Be the Place, the film will be based on a screenplay by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, the husband-and-wife duo best known, respectively, for writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and editing The Believer magazine.

According to the article, the film "follows a young couple's journey around the U.S. as they search for somewhere to put down roots and raise the baby they are expecting"; no casting has been confirmed yet, but with a start scheduled for March, that should change rather quickly.

Mendes, currently finishing the Kate Winslet/Leonardo DiCaprio drama Revolutionary Road for DreamWorks, had planned on adapting George Eliot's Middlemarch next, but -- as Variety puts it -- "after so much heavy-duty drama, Mendes decided that it was time to flex his comedic muscles."

Source: Variety