It feels like it's been a quiet couple of years for Charlize Theron, but her busy 2012 potentially just got busier. Deadline are reporting that Theron is in talks to join **Cities of Refuge as both star and producer.
Details about the project are frustratingly thin, but the official line so far is that it's a crime thriller in which Theron would play "an investigator brought in to solve a brutal murder and kidnapping in which things aren't what they seem?" So the victim wasn't kidnapped and isn't dead?
The only other informtion that's currently "out there" is that the screenwriter is one Brandon Willer, whose lack of a profile on the IMDb suggests he's a newcomer about to get his big break. It would appear to be an original screenplay, which means it isn't based on the novels by Tom Piazza or Michael Helm, or on the song by Nick Cave, in which you'll kneel at the feet of a woman of the street and the gutters will run with blood, and the grave will spew you out, and the blood won't wash off. Awesome as that would be.
Whatever, if it happens, Cities of Refuge will nestle alongside Prometheus and Snow White and the Huntsman in Theron's 2012 diary. The just-finished Young Adult, which is already picking up strong notices and Oscar whispers for Theron, is out in the UK on February 10.