George Clooney, that socially-conscious movie star who uses his A-list clout to produce and direct smart, challenging films like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and the great Good Night, and Good Luck, is looking to produce a film based on the Wall Street bailout. [Variety]

Clooney and his The Men Who Stare At Goats director/producer, Grant Henslov, are developing the project, which is based on a 2009 Washington Post article, “The $700 Billion Man” by Lauren Blumfeld. Clooney may also direct the piece, which chronicles how Neel Kashkari, an official under former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, helped bail out the fatcat banks in 2008 with the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Kashkari then left the public eye and holed up in a cabin in Northern California.

Stranger Than Fiction scribe Zach Helm has been tapped to write the film, which would re-unite Clooney with his Out Of Sight producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher.

While none of this exactly sets the pulse racing, Clooney’s commitment to this kind of material is heartening, if not terribly exciting. The economic crash three years ago is worth exploring, since we plebes aren’t nearly as pissed off about it as we should be. It hasn’t set the box office on fire, though – Oliver Stone‘s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps was a disappointment but the financial drama Margin Call looks promising; (check out Dan Mecca and Jordan Raup‘s video review from Sundance.)

Clooney is currently filming the political drama The Ides of March and will be seen in Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants, which opens on December 16.

Would you see this Wall Street bailout flick? Why aren’t banking movies more exciting – or is that a stupid question?