Chris Pine Circling Rom-Com The Catch Opposite Emma Stone

For thousands of years, the stone pine has been little more than a humble but very lovely looking tree that's native to the mediterranean. Very soon however, it may be about to become shorthand for the top billing of a sure-to-be riotous new Universal rom-com. Truncated (trunk-ated) set-up dispensed with, what we're trying to say is that Deadline is reporting that Chris Pine is circling a starring role opposite Emma Stone in The Catch, an original romantic comedy from Brigsby Bear director — and Stone's husband — Dave McCary.

Set to be directed by McCary from a script by Patrick Kang (The Paper) and Michael Levin (Young Rock), The Catch is currently being described as a "two-hander rom-com", with Bugonia Oscar nominee and two-time Academy Award winner Stone already locked in as one hand and Pine — next to be seen in writer-director Rachel Lambert's Carousel — in talks to play the other. Plot specifics remain firmly under wraps for the time being, though older reports cited by World Of Reel have suggested the baseball connotations of the title aren't coincidental, and that Stone may be playing a baseball fan who accidentally costs her team a match and then finds herself navigating the "unexpected attention and overwhelming guilt" of having become her beloved team's undoing. How Pine would factor into this particular equation is anybody's guess, but we fully support any potential resurrection of the mid-00s sports rom-com boom that gave us such micro-genre greats as Bend It Like Beckham, Wimbledon, and Fever Pitch.

As Deadline understands it, the most recent draft of The Catch was strong enough to place it as likely being the next film Stone will shoot — and with Pine now in talks to co-lead, we fully expect to hear more about this one very soon. Until then, we've just had a great idea: Bend It Like Beckham, Wimbledon, Fever Pitch triple-bill anyone? Anyone? Fine...