Steven Soderbergh scores a Knockout

Forget Moneyball - or even Liberace - Steven Soderbergh has decided his next directing job will be spy thriller Knockout.

And in keeping with recent casting moves (such as porn starlet Sasha Grey for The Girlfriend Experience), he's hired mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano (below) to play the lead.

She's a beautiful woman, but do be careful about slobbering over her as she could quite easily smack the living daylights out of all of us.

With a script by regular collaborator Lem Dobbs, Knockout finds her as a xXx-style girl from the wrong side of the tracks who is offered a second chance to use her fast-fist skills to fight evil.

Soderbergh is planning the pic as a full-on action movie, with location shoots in Ireland, Turkey and the US, among others.

[Source: Variety ]

Does this sound like - ahem - a knockout idea to you? Punch your keyboard...

Freelance Journalist

James White is a freelance journalist who has been covering film and TV for over two decades. In that time, James has written for a wide variety of publications including Total Film and SFX. He has also worked for BAFTA and on ODEON's in-cinema magazine.