Tom Cruise is in final talks to star in David Cronenberg’s next project, starring opposite Denzel Washington in MGM’s thriller The Matarese Circle. The big-budget action pic will see the high-powered leading men — in their first on-screen pairing — play rival spies forced to work together against a mutual, mysterious enemy.

Cruise will play Russian agent Vasili Taleniekov, arch-rival to Brandon Scofield, a role to which Washington has long been attached.

The story, based on the 1979 Robert Ludlum novel, has been updated by Wanted writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas from its original Cold War setting.

The project could be the start of a franchise for MGM, and perhaps Cronenberg, in the spirit of the highly successful Bourne movies, also reworked from Ludlum novels. MGM also holds the rights to a second novel, The Matarese Countdown.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers, Doom), Nick Wechsler (The Time Traveler’s Wife), Ben Smith and Jeffrey M. Weiner of the Ludlum estate are producing. Henry Morrison of the Bourne franchise will exec produce.