Rice also worked as a writer on “American Idol” before creating a production company called Sycamore Pictures with his partner, Memphis resident Ben Nearn. “We ended up raising, roughly, a $50 million equity fund,” he said. “We have that at our discretion, and now we just find good projects.” “The Way, Way Back,” was one of their first.

[Editor’s note: Tom Rice grew up as a member of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Miss., and graduated from the First Presbyterian Day School.]

In fourth grade, Jackson native Tom Rice told his classmates that he wanted to be a film director.

“I was a very creative-minded person growing up in a school that was very sports-centered,” he said. “If you didn’t play sports you were kind of a fish out of water.

“I tried to fit into the sports scene without playing sports. I was the school mascot. It was a way to fit in and adapt. But I had a family who loved me, an interest in artist endeavors, and I was on my own to find out where I would find that creative satisfaction and find out who I was in the same way Duncan does.”

Duncan is the lead character in Rice’s latest film. The Jackson creative who eventually founded his own production company is celebrating the opening of his latest project — an indie with an all-star cast that includes actors Steve Carrell, Toni Collette and Sam Rockwell called “The Way, Way Back.” In it, you meet Duncan, a 14-year-old boy who travels with his mom (Collette) and her overbearing boyfriend (Carrell) to a coastal town during summer vacation and learns many life lessons along the way thanks to the manager of the local Water Wizz water park.

Mississippi moviegoers will get a chance to see the film when it opens Friday at the Malco Grandview 17 in Madison. They can also catch it after its Aug. 2 opening at the Grand 18 in D’Iberville and in Hattiesburg.

Others who round out the cast include Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb, Maya Rudolph, Amanda Peet and Liam James as Duncan.

Business Insider reported in January that Fox Searchlight bought “The Way, Way Back,” paying one of the highest prices for a Sundance movie in recent years — $9.75 million. The company had already distributed “The Decendants,” a film starring George Clooney that earned an Oscar for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay for writers Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, who also wrote “The Way, Way Back.”

“This is how I relate to Duncan. He is discovering who he is in life. He has a family who loves him, but there are certain elements of this particular vacation that make him a fish out of water, and he had to find his way,” said Rice, 39, who grew up off Northside Drive on Heritage Hill in Jackson. As a child, he was influenced by movies like “E.T.,” “Space Camp,” “The Goonies” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”