David Mamet has just cast the lead in his next film that he plans to write and direct. The film is called Blackbird, and while some of that might get your attention for a few moments it’s the plot of the film that is the most interesting part.

Sold as a modern day Hitchcock style thriller it will focus on a secret regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, one that has been kept quiet all this time and hides an amazing truth, well within the confines of the fictional story that is.

David Mamet will write and direct the film, he’s had a mixed bag of films as both writer and director and you can reel off lists of both his good and bad films. His best works include Glengarry Glen Ross or Heist, he’s even worked on a series I loved called The Unit, and of course he’s an award winning playwright as well as a screenwriter and director, so there’s plenty of talent behind the script and screen.

It is of course a fictional story but the idea behind the film Blackbird is interesting indeed. The thriller will follow a woman who travels to Los Angeles for the funeral of her grandfather who was a Hollywood special effects artist for all of his life however his dark secret is that he also worked with special operations within the American government. She discovers this while she is back home and some of the secrets he kept when he was alive come back and fall on her, forcing her to examine the truth about his past and find out more about the secrets that are coming back to haunt them all.

It sounds like an interesting story and with the mention of the assassination of President Kennedy you have to assume that either he was involved in faking it or perhaps in faking something connected with it, the assassin or a follow-up assassination perhaps.

With Mamet writing and directing it’s going to be more than the usual thriller and then add in the female lead that Variety through the L.A. Times tells us is signed up and there’s a lot of talent here, for the woman who will be playing the lead is the wonderful Cate Blanchett.

How can you not be interested in that?