Variety’s Michael Fleming is reporting on his blog that Matt Damon and John Brolin are in negotiations to join the Coens’ re-imagining of the 1969 Western, True Grit. Jeff Bridges originally joined the cast to play the lead role of Marshall Rooster Cogburn, who was originally portrayed by John Wayne 40 years ago.

Now, Matt Damon appears set to play the lawman (originally portrayed by Glen Campbell) who joins with Cogburn and a 14-year old girl to track down her father’s killer. Josh Brolin, meanwhile, would play the killer, Tom Chaney. Of course, Brolin collaborating with the Coen brothers again would reunite the actor and director duo for the first time since the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men in 2007 in which Brolin was shamefully dismissed from the Best Actor discussion.

Damon, who is expected to have a big year this year with performances in both Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! and Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, just finished shooting The Adjustment Bureau opposite Emily Blunt and will collaborate with Eastwood again on the supernatural thriller Hereafter.

The Coens’ True Grit script is reportedly more true to the original Charles Portis novel than the 1969 film version and will apparently tell the story from the 14-year old girl’s perspective rather than that of Marshall Cogburn (Bridges). As a fan of the Coen’s output recent output, especially the currently expanding misanthropic fable A Serious Man, the thought of a period western in the vein of John Ford or Budd Boetticher has me pumped.

Paramount Pictures is set to put the film into production next March for a late 2010 release. If on schedule, True Grit will continue the trend of a Coen film every fall for the last four years.