Kathryn Bigelow to squeeze in another film before the Tom Hanks movie Triple Frontier

Kathryn Bigelow’s planned follow-up to THE HURT LOCKER, the international suspense thriller TRIPLE FRONTIER, is taking a little too long to get going for the director’s tastes. Though she locked up the services of Tom Hanks to star in that film, it looks as if filming won’t begin for about a year. So what’s a girl to do? Go film another movie.

Bigelow and her HURT LOCKER writer Mark Boal are shopping yet another international thriller around Hollywood that would shoot in early 2012 and would not impact her commitment to FRONTIER. Details are being kept under wraps for now but it’s reportedly a “timely story” based on an article about black ops. (Don’t get too excited that Bigelow is making a CALL OF DUTY movie just yet.) The film could be about this summer’s reveal that the US has a black ops team with a “kill or capture” assignment on a number of senior Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents.

As with HURT LOCKER, Boal will write the script for Bigelow to direct and the budget will be kept low, around the $10 million range.

While this is just rampant speculation, it’s been reported that Johnny Depp is very interested in FRONTIER but has DARK SHADOWS set for 2011. It could be that FRONTIER was delayed until later that year to allow for Depp’s involvement and Bigelow and Boal will put the film on the backburner while they work on this new, untitled project.