Where exactly do you place Gerard Butler on the Scale of Badass? Sure the guy has movies like 300 and Rocknrolla under his belt, but romantic comedies like The Bounty Hunter and The Ugly Truth have taken him down a few notches. Butler is the kind of guy you want to see chomping on a cigar and carrying a machine gun through the apocalyptic wasteland, not sitting down in a restaurant making jokes with Jennifer Aniston. Fortunately his newest project sounds more like the former than the latter.

According to THR, the Scottish actor is now attached to star in The Bricklayer. Adapted from the book by Noah Boyd (real name Paul Lindsay), the film will see Butler play a retired FBI agent named Steve Vail who is working as a bricklayer in Chicago when he is called back into duty when a gang of criminals begins "demanding an escalating series of multi-million dollar ransom payments." Butler will co-star alongside an actress who plays the deputy director at the FBI and works as Vail's partner (though the role has not yet been cast). Hanna Weg, who wrote the upcoming Zelda Fitzgerald bio-pic The Beautiful and the Damed, is adapting the screenplay and Mark Gill, the new president of Millennium Films will oversee the project as his first for the studio.

Gerard Butler is a solid actor, but his project selection as of late has been quite dismal. It feels like it's been forever since we've seen a great live-action Gerard Butler movie, so hopefully this will be the one that gets him back on the right track.