Baruchel gets his directing hat on

Jay Baruchel is setting his sights on directing.

The Canadian actor-and-comedian is best known for his work with good friend Seth Rogen in movies like Knocked Up and This Is the End. Younger audiences will also recognise his vocals from the hugely popular How to Train Your Dragon movies, where he voiced hero Hiccup.

2015 is an exciting time for Jay; How to Train Your Dragon 2 is in the running for the best animated film Oscar, and he’s also considering the move into directing.

“My writing partner [Jesse Chabot] and I adapted a graphic novel Random Acts of Violence. We have our financing and our leads, so it looks like I might get to direct that this year as well,” Jay smiled to Collider.

Random Acts of Violence was created by writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti and artist Giancarlo Caracuzzo in 2010. It’s a one-shot graphic novel from Image Comics, and Jay got on board with planning the film adaptation in 2011.

The movie has already secured most of its crew, with Jay looking forward to the prospect of production starting.

“I’m really excited. We’ve got our composer, our editor, our DP. It’s going to blow people’s minds when people see the crew I put together,” he enthused.

The story centres on two writers who pen a comic book about main character The Slasherman. While promoting the book, they realise someone is copying the fictional killings from the comic.

“It’s kind of a repurposing, a modern take on the slasher genre. It’s not un-meta. It’s very much about the nature of creativity, the cyclical nature of inspiration, murder as a form of creative expression, and also the wrong artistic journey of how someone can be swallowed whole by their own ideas.

“It’s f**king crazy and I’m really, really proud of it. It’s probably one of the best things we’ve written,” he added.