Though it was mysteriously ignored at the box office, director Gavin O’Connor delivered one of last year’s treats with Tom Hardy / Joel Edgerton punch-a-thon Warrior. And he’s now a man in demand, presumably because big manly movie execs are still sobbing over that story, and has several projects on the go. He’s adding one more to the list, with Universal hiring him to direct Yakuza.

Chap Taylor wrote the first draft of the script, which sees an American intelligence expert becoming entangled with a notorious Japanese crime godfather and dealing with the dangerous underworld of a country still dealing with the fallout of the 2011 tsunami.

O’Connor will re-write the screenplay for producer Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment and at this early stage, there’s no indication of when this one will actually go in front of cameras. He’s got plenty on his plate already, with the Channing Tatum-driven Peter Pan update Neverland, his spec script The Samurai and adapting Walter Tevis’ novel The Hustler into a stage play with Warrior co-writer Anthony Tambackis.