EXCLUSIVE: Alexander Payne is setting Kristen Wiig to star with Matt Damon in Downsizing for Paramount Pictures. The lead role was originally to be played by Payne’s Election star Reese Witherspoon, but she has had to withdraw over scheduling. He then locked Wiig, the former standout Saturday Night Live performer who followed Bridesmaids with The Skeleton Twins, with the Paul Feig-directed Ghostbusters coming July 15.

Christoph Waltz and Hong Chau are also set in a film that will start production in the spring. It’s Payne’s third film for Paramount, where he most recently directed the Oscar-nominated Nebraska. Downsizing tells the story of an Omaha man who joins the throngs of people undergoing a new process that reduces people to a tiny fraction of their size and who moves to one of the many communities of small people that are sprouting up around the world.

Payne is producing with Mark Johnson. Wiig is repped by UTA and attorney Karl Austen.