Two years on from his Eastwood-baiting Miracle at St Anna, and four years after his last mainstream thriller Inside Man, Spike Lee is about to close a deal to direct **Nagasaki Deadline, according to, er, Deadline. James Cameron and his Lightstorm Entertainment cohorts will be producing.
The script by David and Peter Griffiths has been doing the rounds for several years. The story of an FBI agent racing against the clock to prevent a double home-soil terrorist attack was shelved by Fox after 9/11 (as, more temporarily, was David and Peter's Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Collateral Damage). Resurrected more recently, it lost its director Martin Campbell to Green Lantern. A good opportunity for Lee then, whose reputation for being outspoken and difficult meant offers didn't exactly come flooding in after Inside Man, even though it performed well, box-office-wise.
Lee as director-for-hire (Inside Man, Clockers) is admittedly not quite so interesting as the firebrand Lee that made Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. That's not to say that this won't be a project to watch though: Cameron is hardly likely to keep Lee on a tight leash; terrorism on American turf is still a near-the-knuckle subject; and Lee is one of those directors that almost guarantees a strong cast. The Griffiths boys are currently giving their script a final polish. Expect start dates and casting news before too long.