Clooney, Coens reunite for third movie

LOS ANGELES  - George Clooney is reteaming with filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen for their third film together, "Burn After Reading," a spy caper about a CIA agent who loses the disc of the book he is writing.

The film will mark a more comedic take on the world of spooks than Clooney's recent Oscar-winning dramatic turn in "Syriana." Clooney will play a killer. Clooney and the Coens previously worked together on 2000's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and 2003's "Intolerable Cruelty."

"Burn" is slated to start principal photography in August to mid-September, after Clooney completes directing his 1920s football film "Leatherheads," in which he is expected to star with Renee Zellweger.

The Coens co-write their films, which are directed by Joel Coen and produced by Ethan Coen. They won the Oscar for best original screenplay for 1996's "Fargo." Focus Features has worldwide distribution rights for "Burn."

The brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men," starring Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem, is slated for release next year by Paramount Vantage.

They have put two projects on the backburner: "Suburbicon" and the period comedy "Hail Caesar," about a '20s Shakespeare troupe, in which Clooney was planning to play a hammy actor with a pencil mustache.