CBS Films Will Distribute 'Gambit,' Scripted By Coen Bros. And Starring Colin Firth

We've followed Gambit closely over the past year. That's what happens when a rogue Joel and Ethan Coen script gets new life. The film is a remake of a '60's romantic heist movie, and looks set to be the first post-Oscar performance from Colin Firth. (His deal was done before the Oscars were handed out.) Cameron Diaz co-stars and Michael Hoffman (The Last Station) directs.

Now the film has a distributor. CBS Films will put Gambit in theaters in the US, likely in 2012.

Deadline recaps that the script has been floating around for a decade, and that the film will finally shoot in London in May. Colin Firth plays "an art curator who enlists a Texas rodeo queen (Cameron Diaz) in a scam to con England's richest man."

CBS Films emerged as a distributor last year and has had five films in theaters since: Extraordinary Measures, The Back-Up Plan, Faster, The Mechanic and Beastly. Looks a bit like a lineup only a mother could love (especially Beastly — beware) but the films are starting to make money. Gambit will certainly be the most pedigreed project in the company's catalog when cameras roll in a couple of months. But it can take some companies years to find their feet, and if Gambit turns into the sort of film into which CBS films really wants to put money, we'll all benefit.

Here's a rundown of the original film:

Ideal and reality clash in this humorous tale of the heist that could have been. As scheming career cat burglar Harry Dean (Michael Cane) prepares to steal a priceless statue from the world's richest man, he seeks out the assistance of Eurasian showgirl Suzy Chang (Shirley MacLaine). Though the likable rogue's plan seems foolproof as he conveys the details to his partner Ram (Robert C. Carmel), the execution proves a detailed study in Murphy's Law. Constantly reinventing the plan as his originally ideal spirals ever more out of control, it seems as if Harry's heist is destined to fail.