A screenplay about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire that has been gathering dust for more than half a century could be resurrected by Steven Spielberg, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The Oscar-winning film-maker is eyeing Montezuma, based on a script by famously blacklisted Spartacus screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, for his next directing project. Another member of Hollywood royalty, Oscar-winner Javier Bardem, is tipped to play the Aztec emperor's nemesis, conquistador Hernán Cortés.

Montezuma was once intended to reunite Trumbo with the star of Spartacus, Kirk Douglas. The 1960s screenplay will be now be rewritten by producer Steve Zaillian, the writer of Schindler's List.

Trumbo, a hugely significant figure in Hollywood history, won two Oscars during his lifetime while working under assumed names due to his ostracisation by the US film industry as an alleged communist sympathiser in the McCarthy era. It was his naming in 1960 as the true screenwriter of Spartacus and Exodus (by actor Kirk Douglas and director Otto Preminger) that effectively broke the blacklist on supposed far-left sympathisers that ran from the late 1940s to the late 1950s – a period of heightened fear over Soviet influence in the US. Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston will portray the writer in a biopic from Austin Powers and Bruno director Jay Roach, which will be based on the 1977 book Dalton Trumbo by Bruce Cook and is due to shoot this year.

Spielberg has not yet signed on for Montezuma, but is looking for a new project after his science-fiction epic Robopocalypse collapsed last year.