DEAD SPY RUNNING To Be Directed by Jonathan Levine

The director of The Wackness and 50/50, Jonathan Levine, is in negotiations to direct a film called Dead Spy Running. The film is an adaptation of a book written by John Stock. Levine is a talented director, and is slowly moving away from from the indie film world and into the mainstream. His next movie is a Twilight-looking zombie romance film called Dead Bodies, and now there's this spy film he might end up directing for Warner Bros. I love spy thrillers, and this sounds like it's going to be a good one. 

Here's the book description:

Disgraced MI6 agent Daniel Marchant is running in the London Marathon with his girlfriend, Leila, also an MI6 agent, when he notices a South Asian man in the pack wearing a disguised suicide bomber's belt. When Marchant realizes they are near the American ambassador, another marathon runner, Marchant with Leila's aid does what he has to do to prevent the bombing. This act of bravery, unfortunately, leads to Marchant's falling under suspicion of being a terrorist himself. Foreign terrorists, an MI6 mole, and thugs aplenty populate the pages, but it is the ongoing war between the British and American spy agencies that's the inflammatory heart of this suspenseful, elegantly written novel.

McG was originally attached to direct the movie, but now he will only produce. The script was written by Jamie Moss and Stephen Gaghan, who was asked to direct the movie after McG left, but that didn't work out due to other projects. In a previous interview with McG over on Collider, he explained his vision of the film saying, 

…that is a spy story for this generation. It’s of the Social Network age. Imagine those kids in Zuckerberg’s room in The Social Network. One of them goes on to be a spy and uses his acumen of today’s world: DJ culture, Steve Jobs, the Apple store. Which I say with respect to Bond, Bourne, and Hunt, they don’t really know that world. But there’s a whole generation of kids that do. And what if a spy came from that place? Gaghan knows a lot about that world.

I love this idea, and I think Levine would be a solid choice to take it on. He's a better director than McG. What do you think?