Entertainment Weekly‘s Christine Spines has reported about a casted and ready-to-roll David Fincher crime thriller called Ness, a kind of son-of-The Untouchables about famed Al Capone adversary Eliot Ness, and starring Matt Damon, Casey Affleck and Rachel McAdams. Plus I’ve heard a couple of things myself from a good source.

“So why hasn’t Paramount gotten around to making the darned thing?,” Spines asks. “That’s the question around town as the clock ticks on the studio’s rights to the project, which are due to expire on 12.5.” I’ve actually been told the drop-dead date is December 12th.

“A source inside the negotiations says Damon and Affleck are ready to go,” writes Spines, “and that McAdams has expressed interest, but Paramount has yet to pull the proverbial trigger.

“At press time, the studio insisted it only recently received a finalized script from Ehren Kruger (The Ring) and would make a decision before the rights ran out.

A source close to team Fincher has told me that Fincher is ready to make the picture immediately but can’t get an answer out of Paramount because — ready?– production execs prefer that Fincher make a Keanu Reeves chef comedy instead.