George Clooney and the Coen Brothers can’t get enough of each other. They’re teaming for a third film (yes, third. Everybody remembers O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but Intolerable Cruelty seems to have dropped off the resumes of everyone involved), and this time George is playing a killer. The movie called Burn Before Reading, and it’s based on Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence, by Admiral Stansfield Turner, who served as director of the CIA from 1977 to 1981. It’s like the new golden age of spy movies, huh?
The film would be only loosely based on the book, and it would be about a CIA agent who is writing a book and loses the disc he’s saved it on. Which makes it sound like Clooney would be a killer looking to silence the agent. The film is described as a caper, so I imagine it’ll be a touch less heavy than Clooney’s last spin in espionage, Syriana.
Burn Before Reading won’t start until August of 07, following Clooney’s work on the period football film Leatherheads.