Jay Baruchel claims his rightful screenwriting destiny as a member of the Apatow Gang

Perhaps the most awkward young gosling in the entire Apatow awkward-comedy nest, Jay Baruchel has been similarly nudged out to fly solo in the screenwriting world, signing on to follow-up his recently completed comedy Goon (which he co-wrote with Seth Rogen’s writing partner Evan Goldberg) to pen two new scripts. The first, Random Acts Of Violence, is an adaptation of the eponymous comic about two artists whose horror character comes to life and begins murdering for real; the second is Summit’s Exorcism Diaries, based on Mark Opsasnick’s investigative book The Real Story Behind The Exorcist. It concerns a reporter whose search for the truth behind exorcisms, as in all “exorcism skeptic” stories, might just turn up some unexpected answers that you can nevertheless probably guess at right now.

As with Jonah Hill’s recent move toward zombie-vampire-alien films, bringing Baruchel in as a hired gun on these projects seems like an attempt to bring some Apatovian flavor to increasingly tired genre fare—a move that didn’t totally pan out for The Green Hornet, but we suppose that’s no reason not to give Baruchel the benefit of the doubt.