Hollywood has come up with yet another excuse for Matthew McConaughey to walk around topless onscreen.
The Fool's Gold star is on the shortlist of actors Universal Pictures is eyeing to don (doff?) the Hawaiian shirt in a big-screen version of Magnum P.I., Entertainment Weekly reports.
The popular CBS series, which ran from 1980-88, made a star out of Tom Selleck, who played the former Navy SEAL turned private eye in paradise.
McConaughey is reportedly reading a script of the project, which has been adapted by writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber, the creative force behind 2004's Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
Thurber's involvement begs the question, Will the studio go the action-comedy route with Magnum the way Warner Bros. did with its 2004 update of Starsky & Hutch?
McConaughey is the latest A-lister to be linked to the role. Others previously reported to be in consideration included George Clooney, Ben Affleck and Vince Vaughn.
No word yet whether the 38-year-old McConaughey will be asked to sport a 'stache if he accepts the role. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time: He rocked the facial hair in his memorable role in the 1993 stoner classic Dazed and Confused.
As for Selleck, he told Los Angeles' Star 98.7 last May that he'd be up for appearing in the movie, if the script was decent.
"I'll be happy to do it if it's any good," he said. "There's only one small factor: They have to ask me."
McConaughey is currently filming The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a romance costarring Jennifer Garner due out next February. Per IMDb, he's also attached to The Grackle, a comedy about a barroom brawler who goes into business settling disputes for people who can't afford a lawyer, and Hammer Down, a crime caper about a former NASCAR driver who becomes the wheel man on a heist.
He'll next appear in theaters this summer in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, subbing for a role originally intended for Owen Wilson before the latter's hospitalization last year.
If all goes according to plan, Magnum P.I. could start rolling by the end of the year in time for a 2009 release.