John Krasinski Has Two Big Roles In New Film

It's been nearly a year since The Office series finale — and it probably seems like a lot longer if you stopped watching when Steve Carell left — so it's about time that we start seeing new roles for the show's cast. One Office star making big moves is John Kransinski who is directing and starring in The Hollars . The film will be Krasinki's second time directing a feature film. His first was 2009's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men based on the short story collection by David Foster Wallace. Additionally, Krasinski honed his directing skills when he directed three episodes of The Office.

In The Hollars, The Artist Formerly Known As Jim will star alongside Anna Kendrick, Margo Martindale, and Richard Jenkins. According to Deadline,

[Krasinski] will star in the lead as John Hollar, an aspiring NYC artist who takes his girlfriend (Kendrick) back to his Middle America hometown on the eve of his mother’s (Martindale) brain surgery. There he’s forced to navigate the crazy life he left behind as his dysfunctional family, high school pals, his father (Jenkins), and his over-eager ex flood back into his life ahead of the operation.

Deadline also reports that the film is being "scripted by James C. Strouse in what’s described as a blend of Steel Magnolias and Garden State." So... a dramedy with a traumatic event for hip, young people that like The Shins, it seems.

Kransinski has proven his skills at playing the straight man on The Office and in films like Away We Go and It's Complicated, so what he really has to prove here is his film directing ability. Brief Interviews was generally panned by critics and has a 39 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it sounds like the issue lay in how ambitious a project it was to translate Wallace's book to film. With an original script and a talented cast, it's possible The Hollars will be Kransinski's time to shine as a director. Does this mean he'll ever stop being referred to as Jim Halpert? Well... probably not.