Having had the pleasure of Jon Hamm’s company at Empire Towers (read about his web chat exploits here or listen to him on the podcast right here), we can affirm that he is a disgracefully pleasant human being. He’s also a busy actor, and is set to play sports JB Bernstein in sports drama Million Dollar Arm for Disney. The film was in search of a director, but now Craig Gillespie is in negotiations for the job.

Tom McCarthy, who usually writes and directs (his last gig was Win Win) is sticking to scripting this one, which is based on the true story of how Bernstein found new baseball talents by hosting a reality show in India with cricket players.

After figuring that the techniques for bowling and pitching were incredibly similar, he launched Million Dollar Arm, which auditioned 40,000 cricket players as baseball possibilities. Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel ended up transferring and becoming professional pitchers with the Pittsburgh Pirates, along the way learning about the strange quirks of American culture.

Gillespie last brought us the Fright Night remake and is in development on Will Ferrell indie comedy Flamingo Thief.Hamm, of course, is prepping for the sixth season of Mad Men, which apparently started shooting in Hawaii a few days ago.