It's been six months since Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to take home the Best Director Academy Award, but while she settled on a project long ago, Sleeping Dogs (formerly known as Triple Frontier) with Oscar winning screenwriter Mark Boal, we've yet to see any real forward progress with it. Finally, it appears that they are close to finding a star.

THR reports that none-other-than Tom Hanks is currently in negotiations to star in the director's follow up to The Hurt Locker. Very few details are available about the plot, but it is known that the film will center on five men of various ages and take place on the borders between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, an area notorious for its organized crime that's considered one of the most dangerous regions in the world. Development has been slowed on the project by the script and location issues and currently has no start date for filming.

The Hurt Locker was one of my favorite films of last year and you couldn't have smacked the smile off my face when it beat Avatar for Best Picture. My only concern is Bigelow took six years between features prior to directing it. I'm quite excited to see what the team-up of Bigelow and Boal can bring us this time, but, to be frank, I'm starting to get a bit impatient.