Hot on the heels of news that legendary director Steven Spielberg was considering The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, a historical drama about a young Jewish boy abducted by officers of the Inquisition, for his next helming gig, another promising project has emerged. Frequent Spielberg collaborator Tom Hanks has become attached to a currently untitled Cold War thriller over at DreamWorks, which Spielberg is apparently interested in directing.
The film, written by British playwright Matt Charman, will focus on the true story of attorney James Donovan, who was sent into Russia by the CIA during the Cold War to negotiate the release of a captured U-2 spy plane pilot named Gary Powers. If the project comes together, Hanks will be taking on the role of Donovan.
Marc Platt will produce the thriller, though it’s unclear whether DreamWorks will want to fast-track this project (in which case Spielberg’s involvement seems dubious) or wait for the director’s plate to become a little less full. Currently, though Spielberg hasn’t been attached to a project since he dropped out of American Sniper last year, the Lincoln director’s name has been associated with a host of buzzy films.
At the top of that list is Robopocalypse, a science-fiction epic based on the novel by Daniel H. Wilson. Spielberg was actually set to begin production on Robopocalypse, which Fox is overseeing, earlier this year, but the director nixed those plans just weeks before cameras were set to roll. It’s still highly likely that Robopocalypse will be his next project, given how much time he’s already invested in it, but there are some equally interesting titles also vying for his attention. A Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, historical epic Montezuma, and a remake of West Side Story are just some of the films Spielberg has reportedly circled over the past few months. Whether his history with Hank will send this intriguing historical drama to the top of Spielberg’s list remains to be seen.