Marion Cotillard May Join Brad Pitt in Robert Zemeckis' WWII Spy Thriller

After she joins Michael Fassbender in Assassin's Creed, Marion Cotillard may soon share the screen with another fellow actor worthy of her talents: Brad Pitt. According to THR, Cotillard is in negotiations to join Pitt in an untitled World War II spy thriller at Paramount set to be directed by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cast Away).

The story is being described as a "romantic drama" in which "Pitt and Cotillard as assassins who fall in love during a mission in Casablanca to kill a German ambassador. The duo marry, but domestic bliss is cut short when Pitt’s character, a French-Canadian, is informed his wife is a double agent working for the German government and he must kill her." Naturally, this is probably going to draw a lot of comparisons to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but with a script by Steven Knight (Locke, Eastern Promises, Peaky Blinders), I'm hoping this has a little more going on than that (admittedly fun) 2005 thriller.

For now I think the only thing that's keeping me from being flat-out excited about this is, strangely enough, Zemeckis' involvement. The man is responsible for some of the best movies ever made, but over the past fifteen years he's been seemingly obsessed with tinkering with motion capture technology and 3D (continuing in his upcoming The Walk), and though I liked Flight more than most people upon its release, that movie doesn't hold up very well. It's been a while since Zemeckis has made a truly great live-action film, and with leads like this and a strong script, it might be his time once again.