Nicolas Winding Refn has hired James Bond writers Neil Purvis and Robert Wade to work on “an Asian-set thriller”, it has been reported.

Refn, who is currently finishing his thriller The Neon Demon, which is set in Hollywood and features Keanu Reeves, Elle Fanning and Christina Hendricks among its cast, may make it his next directorial project.

No other details of the film have been released, but Refn is already working with Purvis and Wade on the Amazon-backed TV series Barbarella (based, like the 1968 film, on the cartoon strip by Jean-Claude Forest). Purvis and Wade, meanwhile, who have writing credits on six 007 films stretching back to 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, are working on another prestige TV series, alternative-history SS-GB for the BBC.

Refn also has Button Man: The Killing Game in development – based on the 2000AD strip about hitmen hired to kill each other for sport – and is producing a remake of 1988 slasher Maniac Cop.