It's been a couple of years since Jean-Pierre Jeunet released his last film, MicMacs. As if to make up for lost time, the director of Amelie and, of all things, Alien Resurrection (Jenuet's last English-language film), now has two projects on the go, both of which may be in English.

Variety reports that Jeunet's next project will be an English adaptation of The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, the debut novel of Reif Larson. Jeneut is said to be currently writing the screenplay with Guillaume Laurant, his Amelie and A Very Long Engagement co-writer.

Spivet is a mix of reality and fantasy and tells the tale of a 12-year-old genius cartographer who sets out on what the Amazon blurb calls:

a wild cross-country adventure

He's headed to the Smithsonian to receive the museum's prestigious Baird award. Fancy.

Jeunet has also picked up the film rights to Red Leaves, a mystery novel by Thomas H. Cook. Red Leaves apparently focuses on doubt and the question of guilt – did teenage Keith kidnap and murder the young child he was babysitting?

The question of whether Keith really did do the girl harm supposedly becomes almost secondary as the lives of his family, and the family of the missing child, disintegrate.

Variety reports that Red Leaves would be produced by Jenuet's own Tapioca Films in partnership with the American producer Eric Bromberg.

Bromberg's involvement may be an indicator that this film will also be in English – though Jodie Foster's involvement with A Very Long Engagement might have seem to main the same thing, and certainly didn't.