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Exclusive : Rourke, Hill may ride into The Storm

Update : Walter Hill’s publicist tells us he won’t be doing this movie.

That “Johnny Handsome” reunion mightn’t be too far away.

Rumour has it director Walter Hill and left-hooking superstar Mickey Rourke have been approached to do “The Storm”, a thriller about an inexperienced deputy, filling in for his incapacitated superior, who is forced to go head-to-head with a revenge-seeking criminal – back in town to get back at the sheriff who put him away a decade earlier.

An added twist is that the flick, which sounds as if it’s some sort of contemporary western, is set in the midst of the ferocious Texas storm season.

Rourke would play the bad guy, Press Gibson, who along with his brother and buddies head to a small town in North Texas to confront Sheriff Andrew Wade. When Wade is put down, it’s up to inexperienced sheriff Boyd Clemens to save the day.

Josh Campbell, who wrote the upcoming English-language remake of John Woo’s “The Killer”, is on scripting duties.

Hill and Rourke are yet to sign on, but talks are underway. Hill may wait until “Bullet in the Head”, his Sly Stallone venture that has been pushed back until 2013, nears closer – any buzz from it would only help nut out a good deal here, or any other picture for that matter.

Signings : Greenwood, Streisand, Rudolph, Schilling, Witherspoon, Sonnenfeld, Roth

Mary J.Blige