Macbeth actress Marion Cottilard is in negotiations to star with Brad Pitt in an untitled period spy thriller. Robert Zemeckis is directing the Paramount, New Regency and Graham King's film from a script by Steven Knight, reported Variety.

King, who first developed the project and brought it to Pitt, will produce it alongside Zemeckis and Steve Starkey. The project will be produced through King's GK Films banner with New Regency. Executive producers are Knight, Jack Rapke, Patrick McCormick and Denis O'Sullivan. Details of Knight's script are being kept under wraps.

The pairing of Pitt, 51, and Cotillard, 39, was almost not meant to be as the shoot date for this movie did not initially work with her schedule.

She will next shoot the Fox and New Regency action movie Assassin's Creed with Michael Fassbender. Production for Assassin's Creed begins at the end of the summer and would have overlapped with the Pitt film, which was originally intended to shoot in the fall.

Zemeckis and Pitt apparently asked the studio if production could be pushed so Zemeckis could do press for his TriStar biopic The Walk this fall, while Pitt plans to do the satirical military comedy War Machine. Production moved to the first quarter of 2016, allowing Cotillard to join Pitt in the film.