Michael Mann, perhaps one of the most talented filmmakers currently working, has many options when choosing what his next film will be. He’s kept directing, as there’s the pilot for the HBO series Luck premiering this fall, but as for features? That’s a tad unclear. Two movies we’ve heard about are Agincourt and Big Tuna, with the former being a medieval drama and the latter a Chicago-set gangster story (something he knows as well as anybody). Then there’s also Capa, a biopic of famed war photographer Robert Capa, which had rumored Gemma Arterton and Andrew Garfield for parts, but has since been proven incorrect. Now, we have yet another project to add to the pile.

According to THR, the director is teaming up with Academy Award winner Paul Haggis for Gold, which is written by the Crash scribe, based on a spec script by Patrick Massett and John Zinman, writers for TV’s Friday Night Lights and The Chicago Code. It’s described as being a contemporary thriller “set around a ruthless search for the precious metal,” with its main influence being The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The script attracted Haggis, who liked its tale of “prospectors and speculators on the hunt for gold,” and impressed Mann when he showed it to him. It’s been acquired for his Forward Pass banner, and the plan is to develop and package it before it’s brought to a studio. The film is said to be in the early development process, so at least a few of the aforementioned projects that he has lined up will see the light of day before this.

You see, I want to be excited here, but there is a problem at the front and center: Paul Haggis. While I don’t think he’s the complete disaster of a screenwriter that some make him out to be, many of the criticisms certainly come off as valid when you look at his work. I’ll see anything that Michael Mann directs (even The Keep), so this has my vote of confidence; the man behind the words is what’s keeping me from completely embracing this, however.

Are you excited for this project, or do you wish Paul Haggis wasn’t writing it?