Whiplash director Damien Chazelle to direct Neil Armstrong biopic

One of the biggest movies at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was director Damien Chazelle’s WHIPLASH. He must still be riding on its critical success and likely continued success with audiences with its release next month; but still, there’s no rest for this guy. His next feature will be the musical LA LA LAND with Miles Teller and Emma Watson, and now his follow up to that loos to be the Neil Armstrong biopic, FIRST MAN, based on James Hansen‘s book "First Man: A Life of Neil A. Armstrong."

This is the synopsis of Hansen’s book from Amazon:

When Apollo 11 touched down on the moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the moon became a legend. In First Man, Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over fifty hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this “magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon.

Upon his return to earth, Armstrong was honored and celebrated for his monumental achievement. He was also—as James R. Hansen reveals in this fascinating and important biography—misunderstood. Armstrong’s accomplishments as engineer, test pilot, and astronaut have long been a matter of record, but Hansen’s unprecedented access to private documents and unpublished sources and his interviews with more than 125 subjects (including more than fifty hours with Armstrong himself) yield this first in-depth analysis of an elusive American celebrity still renowned the world over.

THR reports that screenwriter Josh Singer (THE FIFTH ESTATE) is set to write the screenplay and "had full access to Armstrong’s family as well as NASA when he wrote the tome" says THR. Singer also wrote SPOTLIGHT, the story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal that is in preproduction, with Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams set to star.

FIRST MAN has been sitting around for at least a decade and had Clint Eastwood attached at one point; it sounds like a great feature idea, and as Chazelle’s first big studio film, I don’t think he can go wrong here. First up though is WHIPLASH, which opens in theaters on October 10th 2014.