He's a sneaky one, that Bryan Singer. You've got to keep your eye on him. While he's leading you in one direction, he'll be busy with something over your shoulder. For while the movie world's attention has been focused on the sequel to **Superman Returns **(currently, however tentatively, running with the title Superman: Man Of Steel), and a few glances have been cast at his US TV adaptation of Footballer's Wives, it's just been announced that the director has just signed a deal to make a small thriller for none other than Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, over at the newly resurrected United Artists.
And the good news doesn't end there – the WWII set story has been written by his old cohort from the days of The Usual Suspects and Public Access, Christopher McQuarrie. Now they've been knocking about together since then, especially writing a remake of Logan**'s **Run, but this is their first original work together since Keyser Soze convinced the world he didn't exist.
According to Singer, this new project came together quite quickly. "Chris showed me [the script] late last year, and we worked on it quietly during the holidays," said the director. "We brought it to UA, and it was nice one-stop shopping. We decided it was the right place to make the movie, as opposed to shopping it around." Nice work if you can get it!
The only downside to this is that it will push back Singer's Man Of Steel, and his biopic of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, The Mayor Of Castro Street. McQuarrie also has another directorial project on the go (just his second after the highly under-rated Way Of The Gun), currently in pre-production on The Stanford Prison Experiment, but if he's already done on the WWII script, it shouldn't mash up his schedule to any great degree.
Very little is known about the plot yet, but it's been described as being "similar to Suspects, in that it's an ensemble character piece." No cast have been named, but we'll put down a fiver that Kevin Spacey's name will be on the table.****