Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Matt Damon is negotiating to join The Monuments Men, the period drama that George Clooney will direct in January in Europe as a co-production between Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Damon joins what continues to be shaping up as an amazing cast. Besides Damon and Clooney, the film will star Skyfall‘s Daniel Craig, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, The Artist’s Jean Dujardin, Argo‘s John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban. Clooney and Damon did the Ocean’s Eleven movies together and Syriana.

The drama, which was scripted by Clooney and partner Grant Heslov, confronts the final chapter of Germany’s rule, which came down to the absolute destruction of everything that makes a culture keep its standing, including the lives that are lost and the sacrifices that are made. All of this is in danger of being lost forever as Hitler and the Nazis try to cover the tracks of a murderous regime. A crew of art historians and museum curators unite to recover renown works of art that were stolen by Nazis before they are destroyed.

Heslov is producing through their Smokehouse banner. Alexandre Desplat is doing the score, and the crew is the same as from the Ben Affleck-directed Argo, which Clooney and Heslov produced and Desplat scored. Damon will next be seen in the Oscar-bait Gus Van Sant-directed Promised Land, which Damon and co-star John Krasinski wrote together and which Focus Features releases wide January 4 after an Oscar-qualifying run later this year. Damon is repped by WME.