If you’re among the rather rabid audience for which the mere combination of the names Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman causes excited palpitations, then you’d better lie down before reading any further. The two filmmakers, who teamed for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, are reportedly circulating a new film pitch to financiers. There is no plot outline available, or any info at all. The LA Times reports the news, and notes that as the project exists in pitch form, there’s not even a script to share at this point.

And here we were, just earlier today, noting that a heady film like Synecdoche, New York or the theoretical Fellini-esque second half of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman project seemed like a difficult sell of late. And perhaps that’s the case — there’s no financing for this one yet. But fingers crossed that Jonze and Kaufman get financiers to bite. We can always use more conceptual, engaging movies like their previous two collaborations. Very much hoping this happens, and isn’t an overblown, too-early announcement of intent.

A few speculative, possibly connected details are after the break.

/Film reader Gwen points me to a post on the site Being Charlie Kaufman which links to an Italian interview from June, in which the screenwriter seems to talk vaguely about a script that was then called Tentative. Yep, not like he’s ‘tentatively working on a new script’ but that Tentative is the name. Or was — hardly sounds like it would be a final title. Here’s a Google translation of the original source:

For now, entitled ‘Tentative’ I must confess that I found myself in trouble, so I thought it would come as I wanted, but eventually I did, even though I spent fifteen months to complete. I always end up being in situations that do not like, but that helped me to get on with the job . ” Who will see the work in the future? ” No director has contacted me recently and so I did, but if I had to choose one for my own script I would love to work with David Lynch . “

My Italian is non-existent, so keep in mind that this is a Google translation — it could be quite wrong, or even subtly wrong. And, if this potential Jonze/Kaufman project is just a pitch, it is entirely possible that whatever script he was talking about in Italy is not the one he’s selling now.