Chris Evans set to make his directorial debut in ‘1:30 train’: good news?

Just the other day, I was just telling Kaiser and CB that Chris Evans really needs to get papped more often. For a guy who has a pretty huge acting career these days, he manages to fly under the radar for the most part. When he actually gets papped, he’s running like hell in the hopes that no one will see him entering his dermatologist’s office. The problem is that Chris, when he actually poses in still photos, tends to look like a wax doll — sort of plasticky like he looked at Comic-Con, and then when I posted some set photos of him filming Captain America 2: Winter Soldier, you guys got all upset because I chose “the bad photos,” which were actually the “best available” pics. I get it though, I really do. We fangirls are starved for good Chris Evans photos and must resort to staring at this gif of his remarkable, shaking butt just to get our fix.

Seriously, people. Make me choose my favorite dude from Avengers, and I’ll briefly try to choose between Thor and Loki before quickly settling upon the Cap’s ass. You Loki fangirls can have him and his hair gel, but I will steal Loki’s scepter to defend dat Cap ass.

Yet the problem remains of how to best illustrate this post, so I had to dig back to last November for some photos of Chris running on the set of A Many Splintered Thing, but at least he’s supposed to be running in these photos. Why his his character dressed so douchey for a race though? Who knows. Good news though, sort of — Chris is set to make his directorial debut with 1:30 Train. Will he star as well? I hope so:

EXCLUSIVE: Chris Evans will make his feature directorial debut on 1:30 Train, a Ron Bass-scripted film that will be funded by Wonderland Sound And Vision. Evans will star and produce with Mark Kassen, Howard and Karen Baldwin, Bill Immerman, and Wonderland’s McG and Mary Viola. I’ve heard Evans plans to direct the movie this fall, completing production before he picks up his shield to play Captain America in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, the Joss Whedon-directed sequel for Marvel. The film is a romance in the vein of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, focusing on two strangers who meet in Manhattan and spend one night together as the conflicts in their own lives become the basis for their exploration of each other and themselves.

This becomes the first financed feature for Wonderland since director-producer McG re-launched his Wonderland banner last month with a multi-year funding partnership with Mickey Liddell’s private equity-backed LD Entertainment. This has enabled Wonderland to be a buyer and independently develop, produce and finance its own slate of feature film, television and digital projects. Wonderland’s McG and Viola worked with Evans on the upcoming Justin Reardon-directed A Many Splintered Thing, and 1:30 Train grew out of that. Evans had been involved in an earlier incarnation of the film with another director. And he never forgot the material. Now’s [sic] he’s in a position to do something about it. Evans is repped by CAA and 3 Arts. CAA will handle the domestic deal with WME on 1:30 Train.

[From Deadline]

The commenters at Deadline are not thrilled at this development and feel that CAA could have scored Chris a better script than a Before Sunrise knockoff. Several of them also claim to have read the script and have labelled it “mediocre” at best. But I think it’s great that Chris is stepping out of his superhero suit and diversifying himself, and maybe he can pull this movie off in a big way and surprise everyone. Ass attributes aside, the guy does appear passionate about film, and no one can deny that he’s a hard worker.

Oh, and I sort of lied — Chris does get papped on occasion. Here he is leaving Bootsy Bellows with Minka Kelly in April.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet, Pacific Coast News, and WENN