Earlier this month, we got the news that Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven) had exited the upcoming film adaptation of the 1960s TV show, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The project had found it increasingly difficult to get its leading cast, and with Soderbergh dedicated to his current pre-retirement schedule, he decided that it would be a much safer bet to fill his schedule before his final film, the Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, with something other than U.N.C.L.E.

The Playlist are now reporting that Soderbergh has found that replacement film in the form of the Scott Z. Burns-scripted psychological thriller, The Bitter Pill, originally titled The Side Effects.

Burns was originally intending to direct the project himself, when we heard about it back in September, but it looks like his recently frequent collaborator Soderbergh is going to helm the film instead. The pair have worked together before on The Informant! and this year’s Contagion, and The Bitter Pill sounds like it’s going to be a brilliant penultimate film for Soderbergh to direct.

Official plot details are still under wraps, but when Burns was talking about the project a couple of months ago, he said of it,

“It deals with people and their moods. It’s about how we as a society can’t tolerate sadness and what that makes us vulnerable to… It’s definitely got a twist… It’s a story where it’s like if someone were listening to the conversation you and I were having and thought ‘Hmmm, if that’s the way that society is working how can I manipulate that, how can I use that?’ And that’s what the movie’s about.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like it has great potential to me. And with Burns and Soderbergh re-teaming for this one, it should be brilliant. Casting had been scheduled to begin very soon with Burns behind the camera, and hopefully that will stay the same with Soderbergh taking the helm in his place.

Since the director is planning on getting to work on his Liberace film, which is thought to be his final film after he announced his retirement earlier this year (I’m hoping it will be more of a hiatus than a permanent retirement), movement on The Bitter Pill should be getting underway pretty quickly now, which is nothing but good news. Filming will no doubt commence early next year, and I’m already excited about this coming to the big screen. It sounds like it’s going to be awesome.