If everything goes according to plan, David Cronenberg hopes to bring his next project to Filmport this fall, though in the meantime The Matarese Circle still needs a finished script and a green light from MGM.

But the director says there is a ‘huge possibility’ that the big-budget spy story could shoot its interiors at the Toronto studio.

‘[Filmport] and I have both been brainwashing MGM regularly and they’re not opposed to it. All the auguries are good,’ says Cronenberg from his Toronto home, on a break from working on the script. Would-be stars Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington have not yet signed on the dotted line, but remain interested in the project, which would see them as rival spies forced to work together against a common foe.

It all adds up to the usual level of uncertainty that precedes any movie, says Cronenberg. He’s comfortable with it.

Matarese is looking to shoot this September, though given its origins in Robert Ludlum’s tale of a shadowy and international conspiracy, it will presumably include stays somewhere close to the Mediterranean.

‘In the book, [the villains] come from Corsica, which is technically part of France but used to be part of Italy,’ he notes, after gently correcting my pronunciation of the title. ‘So you get both languages.

‘I’ve been working on my Italian,’ he adds.

As for his French, Cronenberg’s already close relationship with that country will grow even cozier Wednesday when he is inducted into its Legion of Honor. The legion, France’s highest honor, puts Cronenberg in the uncommon company of other foreigners who have, on occasion, been acknowledged for their contribution to French ideals; in his case, French culture and the country’s ties with Canada. Others in the legion include Queen Elizabeth II, musician Quincy Jones and Clint Eastwood.

‘That’s the fun of it,’ says Cronenberg, who will be inducted in a Toronto ceremony with the French ambassador. ‘You have an interesting peer group… involving people who don’t just do what you do. And yet you are connected creatively somehow, and that’s a nice company to be in.’

‘It’d be great to have a dinner with everyone, all the surviving members of the legion of honor,’ he enthuses. ‘That would be great — go to Paris and have a dinner.’

Cronenberg already holds a number of French distinctions. He is an honorary citizen of Cannes and of the small town where he lived in the 1970s, Tourettes Sur Loup, and was given the Medal of Paris following the production of the opera based on his 1986 film The Fly.

The urge to experiment that brought about his unlikely opera also led him to Matarese Circle, he says. The action and undeniably Hollywood movie is a departure for the famously outre filmmaker — even in light of his move, over time, from blood-soaked body horror to the more auteur-ish dramas Eastern Promises and A History of Violence.

‘I’m just interested in trying things I haven’t done before,’ he says, such as when he curated that Andy Warhol exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. ‘I’ve never had contempt for these kinds of movies. They’re very hard to write, very hard to put together, and it would be quite a marathon to shoot.’ His biggest ever, by far.

‘I hope it happens,’ he says, adding, ‘And if you have any ideas for act two, let me know.’