George Clooney Beefs Up ‘Suburbicon’ Cast with Julianne Moore, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin

Don’t play with our hearts like this, Clooney. Academy Award-winning actor and director George Clooney has begun making moves to get a production by the name of Suburbicon up and running, an exciting prospect for movie-industry observers. With a script written by Joel and Ethan Coen (whose new comedy Hail, Caesar! opens with Clooney in the lead at the Berlin Film Festival in February), Suburbicon remains shrouded in mystery apart from the details that it will 1). be a neo-noir, 2). set in the 1950s, and 3). hit the same notes as the Coen brothers’ breakout debut Blood Simple. It’s all so exciting, but we’ve heard this one before; the unproduced Clooney-attached Suburbicon script has been floating around for over a decade, with vague noncommittal murmurs never amounting to much of anything in the way of a real production.

But an announcement from Deadline last night suggests that Clooney may not be pulling our collective legs this time around. Real movies have casts, and now Suburbicon does too: heavy hitters Julianne Moore, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin have all begun to negotiate contracts for starring roles in the buzzy project, though none of them have confirmed the full commitment that Clooney has in the director’s chair. They’ve got ample time to ponder on the gig, seeing as Suburbicon isn’t scheduled to commence shooting until October, but regardless, that’s one tantalizing cast list.

And as personnel goes, there’s another exciting behind-the-scenes get for this project: Robert Elswit has signed on as Director of Photography, bringing his unparalleled eye to the overall look of the film. For those unfamiliar with Elswit and his body of work, the man was responsible for shooting Nightcrawler, Inherent Vice, The Town, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Good Night and Good Luck, do we really need to keep going?