Matt Damon has attached himself, like a human spider, to The Adjustment Bureau, a sci-fi flick based on a Philip K. Dick short story, which is currently being pitched to studios around Hollywood, with a view to shooting before the end of the summer.

It marks the second high-profile project to be packaged to studios in such a way today, along with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s B Team, their action comedy co-starring Mark Wahlberg. Both projects are essentially already to go, and only need a studio to say ‘yes’ and sign a great big cheque. It’s a risk – studios prefer to mitigate risk by developing their own product – but a calculated one, given the talent involved.

The Adjustment Bureau package includes George Nolfi as writer and director. Nolfi previously worked with Damon on Ocean’s Thirteen and The Bourne Ultimatum, and is currently also working on the fourth Bourne film.

He adapted The Adjustment Bureau from Dick’s 1954 short story, Adjustment Team, about a man who discovers that his reality is, in effect, a giant soundstage controlled and manipulated by mysterious guardians.

Sounds spooky – and very Dick. In fact, it could make for a nice companion piece to Total Recall (based on Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale), which similarly pierced reality’s thin fabric… and added tons of corpses and piles of blood.

The Adjustment Bureau (not sure about that title) will probably be a more serene affair. It certainly doesn’t seem to have been pitched as a thriller, rather a contemporary sci-fi love story. But Damon’s involvement has certainly piqued our interest –and is virtually certain to lure a studio on board by the end of the week.