Disney’s mysterious and already-compelling new sci-fi pic 1952 (currently AKA Tesla) boasts Brad Bird directing, so we’re predisposed to be positive. But now the team is looking to add George Clooney as the putative movie’s star. People, you have our full attention.

Though nothing is official yet – Clooney is in negotiations and the Mouse House has not yet waved the starting flag for the film – 1952 is shaping up to be an enticing prospect.

The script, by Damon Lindelof and Jeff Jensen, is being kept strictly under wraps, which has led to much speculation (including wild speculation that they could all have really been gearing up to make the new Star Wars movie, which rather got shot down with the word on Michael Arndt) and attempts to discover what it’s really about. There’s talk of aliens and comparisons to Close Encounters, but with no real information, nobody outside of the core team knows for sure yet.

If Bird does make this his next film, it’ll surely take him out of the running for the first of the new Lucasfilm trilogy, but our fingers remain crossed he gets to make one of them. Clooney, meanwhile, is getting set to direct and star in his next film, The Monuments Men, which will see him tracking artwork stolen by the Nazis during World War II alongside the likes of Daniel Craig, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin and Cate Blanchett. So it’s essentially excitement all round.