Atom Egoyan and Robert Lantos are re-teaming for Adoration, the Oscar-nominated director’s 11th feature film and his seventh collaboration with the head of Serendipity Point Films, following 2005’s Where the Truth Lies.

Jennifer Weiss and Simone Urdl of Film Farm (Away from Her) will produce the teen drama, while Lantos will serve as executive producer. Telefilm Canada has invested in the script development phase, but hasn’t made a decision on the production agreement.

Egoyan says that Adoration, which is in the final casting stage and set to begin shooting in Toronto on Sept. 17, will have a budget similar to that of his The Sweet Hereafter — around $5 million — although the subject matter is quite different. Set in contemporary Toronto and to be shot on film, the ensemble piece will examine how kids redefine themselves through the Internet.

The drama centers on a high school student who claims to be a figure from recent history. Egoyan has been doing a lot of his research in schools. ‘What’s interesting is that [the kids] have a different relationship to each other in a classroom than they do in this virtual stage,’ he says.

‘What excites me is that the script…is open enough that I can change and modify based on what we find out as we’re shooting it. That to me is the ideal kind of structure. That was a tricky thing, to be honest, with Where the Truth Lies. Because it’s a murder mystery, it was written in a very specific way. It was the first film I’ve ever made where the edited version of it is almost exactly the same as what the script is, because of the deployment of the narrative and the plot.’

Adoration will be released through Lantos’ new distribution company.