Exciting – if still rumour-y – news coming out of Deadline today: one of Martin Scorsese’s possible future projects, hit man tale The Irishman, which already features Robert De Niro aiming to star, has now attracted the attention of Joe Pesci and Al Pacino.

Adapted from Charles Brandt’s book I Heard You Paint Houses, the film will follow the life of mob hit man Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, with De Niro playing the conflicted Sheeran.

It’s been slowly developing at Paramount, with Scorsese pondering whether to make it as his next movie after Hugo Cabret. Since he hasn’t yet committed yet, we’re considering Pacino and Pesci in the “likely” file rather than attached, but who doesn’t want to see De Niro and Pacino in particular together again, if only to wash the mess that was Righteous Kill from our collective cinematic experience?

This Irishman might be undergoing a title change before it reaches the screen, though – since there’s already a competing project labouring under the title which features Val Kilmer, Ray Stevenson and Christopher Walken, and tracks Ohio mobsters in the 1970s.

Now if only they could find a way to combine the two – that would surely count as one of the coolest casts ever on celluloid…