He spent this year putting Gemma Arterton though hell in The Disappearance of Alice Creed, and now it looks like director J Blakeson is planning to make life tough for a whole city full of people, negotiating to handle Hell and Gone for Warner Bros.

There aren’t that many details of the film itself in the Heat Vision blog’s report, but we do know that it’s a Titanic-style story of tragedy and love set against the blistering backdrop of the Great Chicago Fire, which tore through the place in 1871.

Jonah Nolan, who you might be slightly familiar with through his work on Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and the upcoming Dark Knight Rises, is behind the script. Which makes us much more eager to see the final film.

While Creed did decent business over here, it didn’t exactly set any attendance records in the US, but it did put Blakeson's name on the meeting list of executives and other creative types in Hollywood.

With Nolan’s name behind it and studio backing, the pic has a shot at making it to the screen, though given how Brad Bird’s take on the San Francisco earthquake (1906) got stuck in budgetary limbo despite enjoying Pixar/Warners as its supporters, we’ll take a wait-and-see approach on this one.