Tom Cruise has been circling several projects over the last few months, but it looks like he's finally spun the Wheel of Fortune and chosen one. Yes, he has approved the script for, and is in advanced negotiations to star in, Wichita with Cameron Diaz. James Mangold is set to direct.
The film, which is nothing to do with the Jacques Tourneur Wyatt Earp Western of the same name from 1955 or indeed the Wichita Lineman (who is still on the liiiiiiiiine), apparently sees Cruise play a spy.
That bit is familiar ground there for him, but this time he's not engaged in impossible missions but is "popping in and out" of the life of a single woman (Diaz). It's an action-comedy, with several action set-pieces (we're told), so we're guessing he keeps appearing in her life through a series of bizarre coincidences, rather than this being a Mr and Mrs Smith-style set-up.
The screenplay's been through several incarnations already, but Minority Report's Scott Frank did the most recent draft, and James Mangold is currently tweaking it along with Shutter Island's Laeta Kalogridis. There are rumours of a summer 2010 release.
Meanwhile, if you were rooting for Cruise to choose one of the other options on his dance card, despair ye not: he may yet follow this up with Len Wiseman's **Motorcade, Bharat Nalluri's **The Tourist, David Cronenberg's **The Matarese Circle, Working Title's **Lost For Words or Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck's **The 28th Amendment. It's nice to be popular, isn't it?