Spielberg And Hanks May Team For Cold War Thriller

Like almost all directors, Steven Spielberg has a number of potential film projects in development at any one time, any one of which could suddenly be ready to go ahead into production. Currently, it seemed as if it the two frontrunners were the futuristic Robopocalypse or the historical drama Montezuma, based on a five decade old screenplay by Hollywood writing legend Dalton Trumbo. But now a new possibility has emerged today with the announcement that Tom Hanks has been attached to star in an untitled Cold War thriller and that Spielberg is eying the film as a possible directorial vehicle.

According to Variety, the screenplay for the project is by Matt Charman and would feature –

the true story of James Donovan (Hanks), a prominent American attorney enlisted by the CIA during the Cold War to slip behind the iron curtain to negotiate the release of a pilot captured when his U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia.

Although a final budget is almost finished for Robopocalypse, which would place it one step closer to getting into production, there is some whispering that Spielberg is not interested in directing a giant tentpole film this time and the smaller in scale project with Hanks is awful tempting to him.

This would be the fourth collaboration between Spielberg and Hanks, and given that their previous three films – Saving Private Ryan, The Terminal, and Catch Me If You Can as well as their work together producing HBO’s Band of Brothers and The Pacific miniseries – certainly make this a project to not only watch but to look forward to.