George Clooney is taking his frequent collaborations with the Coen brothers behind the camera—not like that, fertile a field for indie-darling slash fiction as it might be—with Deadline reporting that the Hail, Caesar! star is in talks to direct a film from a script by the prolific pair. Titled Suburbicon, the movie is being described as a noir in the vein of 1984’s Blood Simple, centering on a small-scale crime in a 1950’s town, apparently beset by a bunch of dangerous Coen brothers tropes. (Local cops should probably look out for laconic, implacable killers, Steve Buscemi, and the darkness hiding in their own fearful hearts.)
With any luck, Suburbicon will serve to be as steady a draw for Clooney as the similarly Coen-penned Bridge Of Spies has been for Steven Spielberg; George-the-director could really use a hit, given that his last stint in the director’s chair produced The Monuments Men, a movie so nondescript that we’ll have forgotten it existed by the time this sentence is done. (Meanwhile, it’s been a decade since the last time Clooney’s directorial efforts picked up any real praise, for the Academy Award-nominated news drama Good Night, And Good Luck.) If nothing else, the combination of Clooney’s pull and the Coen‘s reputation should ensure that this thing has a pretty amazing cast, maybe even better than the one the actor-director assembled for The Monuments Men. (Whatever the hell that eventually turns out to have been.)