Clint Eastwood's ready to make our day by finally making an appearance in a new movie.
The erstwhile Dirty Harry is set to go before cameras in his first film role since starring opposite Hilary Swank in 2004's Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby.
Eastwood will direct himself in Gran Torino, which is due in December for Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures.
Torino's plot is being kept a closely guarded secret and no details were available.
But by the sound of the title, it's not hard to imagine car-centric flick putting Eastwood behind the wheel of that old '70s classic, the Ford Torino, which the motor company employed as the basis for its NASCAR fleet. The Torino also famously served as the mode of transportation for the old Starsky & Hutch series.
Eastwood's involvement in the project didn't surface until the studio put it on its calendar for an end-of-the-year release. (The news was first reported Wednesday by Variety.) No word when Torino starts lensing, or if in fact production is already under way.
While never officially announcing his retirement from film roles, the 77-year-old actor-director has largely shifted his focus to filmmaking, helming four lauded pictures in the past five years: 2003's Mystic River; 2004's Million Dollar Baby, which earned him his second Best Director Academy Award as well as Best Picture; and his 2006 World War II-fer, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.
Next up for Eastwood is The Changeling. He directed Angelina Jolie as a mother whose son is kidnapped. At first she is happy when she believes the boy has been returned to her, only to question whether he's really her son. Universal and Imagine will unspool that film Nov. 7.
He's also supposedly in talks to take the reins on The Human Factor, a drama about South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela.