Exclusive: Kim Chapiron to Direct Cassel & Bellucci in Rom-Com

The “Mesrine” star will produce the film, which hopes to shoot during the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro in 2012.

EXCLUSIVE

French director Kim Chapiron will reunite with his "Sheitan" star Vincent Cassel for an untitled romantic comedy that will also star the actor's wife, Monica Bellucci, Cassel's publicist has confirmed to TheWrap.

Cassel will produce the project through his company 120 Films, and the plan is to shoot during the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro in 2012.

Details of the project began to leak earlier in the week, when Cassel told USA Today while promoting his riveting, Cesar Award-winning performance in "Mesrine" that he and Bellucci would work together again.

The revelation was promptly deleted from the article before Google cached the info, but the quick-thinking editors at The Playlist grabbed a Google screenshot from the first line of USA Today's original story.

Cassel and Bellucci have been married for 11 years and are considered the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of Europe. The duo met while making 1996's "L'appartement" and have appeared in eight movies together, including Gaspar Noe's incendiary 2002 masterpiece "Irreversible." They haven't really shared the screen, though, since 2004's "Secret Agents," although Bellucci did make a cameo in "Sheitan."

Chapiron, who is dating actress Ludivine Sagnier, recently wrote and directed the juvenile delinquent drama "Dog Pound."

Bellucci recently starred alongside Nicolas Cage in Disney's "The Sorceror's Apprentice," and previously appeared in "Shoot 'Em Up" and "The Passion of the Christ." She'll next be seen opposite Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn and Vanessa Redgrave in Larysa Kondracki's drama "The Whistleblower."

Cassel, who previously starred in "La Haine," "Elizabeth," and "Derailed," is perhaps best known to American audiences as the French thief in Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Twelve." The acclaimed actor next stars in Darren Aronofsky's ballet thriller "Black Swan," and recently reunited with his "Eastern Promises" director David Cronenberg and co-star Viggo Mortensen for the psychoanalysis drama "A Dangerous Method."

Cassel and Bellucci are represented by CAA, while Chapiron is represented by Agence Elizabeth Simpson in France.

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