BREAKING: Actress Scarlett Johansson will make her helming debut on Summer Crossing, an adaptation of Truman Capote’s first novel. Aldamisa will sell international rights here at Cannes, and CAA will make the domestic distribution deal. The plot: a 17-year-old debutant opts out of her parents’ Parisian travels to foster a romance with a Jewish valet parking attendant in the middle of a 1945 summer NYC heat wave. The novel had never been published by Capote, who threw it in the trash. It fell into the hands of the apartment janitor, who hung on to it. The manuscript resurfaced at a 2004 auction, where it fell back into the right hands and was published with the blessing of Capote’s former editor. How exactly the acquired material was brought back to light will remain a mystery, because Capote was dead. His work lives on as Johansson sparked to his early prose.

“Several years ago I began working alongside the Capote estate and writer Tristine Skylar to adapt ‘Summer Crossing’, an inspired early work of Truman’s which has long captured my heart,” Johansson said. “Being able to bring this story to the screen as my full length directorial debut is a life dream and deep privilege.”