After hefting heavy weaponry in the service of charity for Machine Gun Preacher, Gerard Butler’s looking to do some real damage – albeit heroically – by kicking off negotiations to star in Relativity Media’s Hunter Killer.

Antoine Fuqua has been aboard to direct the film for a while now, working on a plot adapted from George Wallace and Don Keith’s novel Firing Point. The story concerns a rogue Russian general who kidnaps his country’s president and looks to kick off World War III.

Allied against him are an untested submarine captain, Joe Glass (the role Butler is in talks for) and a Navy SEAL unit led by Bill Beaman. Relativity is trying to lock down Sam Worthington to play the SEAL commander.

Butler will next show up in Coriolanus and has also just finished work on soccer mom comedy Playing The Field. He’s about to kick off shooting on surfing pic Of Men And Mavericks for Curtis Hanson. Worthington, meanwhile, was in The Debt and Last Night and will next be seen in Man on a Ledge and Clash of the Titans 2, among other projects.

Fuqua is looking to start shooting in Hunter Killer either late this year or early next, and the film is already targeting a December 21 release date in the States.