It was already shaping up to be the Best Film Ever (sorry, **Casablanca, Citizen Kane **and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo). But the Coen Brothers' recently announced Burn After Reading only gets to sounding more and more interesting with every tidbit of casting news - especially with today's announcement that John Malkovich is joining the cast.
Malkovich will play a CIA agent who loses a disc containing the text of his memoirs (and therefore presumably a few state secrets as well). Frances McDormand will play his philandering wife, with the already-cast George Clooney as an assassin. Brad Pitt's role, however, remains under wraps, as does the rest of the plot, but we're told that it's a "dark screwball comedy", putting it firmly on Coens home turf.
This will be the Coens' next film after the about-to-premiere-at-Cannes No Country For Old Men (another likely contender for Best Film Ever at this point), with shooting due to start in August. This cast is a nice mix of Coen veterans - Clooney and Frances "Mrs Joel Coen" McDormand - and newbies Pitt and Malkovich. Let's hope they fit in with the crowd, but somehow we suspect this one's going to work out.