You can already see the trailer: From the author who brought you Jason Bourne! And the visionary director who blew your mind with “Scanners” and broke your heart with “A History of Violence”! Tom Cruise…and Denzel Washington in…“The Matarese Circle”!!

It pretty much screams Hollywood blockbuster, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For all the ink spilled in the trades and on the Internet over the adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel, MGM has not yet green-lit the ‘Matarese’ project. In an exclusive interview with the man pegged to both write and direct, David Cronenberg revealed to MTV News that the movie, while still on track, is not yet a done deal—because there are neither contracts with the stars nor a final script in place.

“Nobody has signed on,” Cronenberg said. “The Hollywood is term is ‘attached.’ Nobody actually knows what that means. It’s a very abstract, almost religious concept.”

The bottom line, and why he’s certain the film will move foward, Cronenberg explained, is that “Denzel is very interested in the idea of doing a movie with Tom Cruise and with me. It will depend on him loving the script and then signing on. At the moment we don’t have a script that we’re ready to show.”

(more…)