Paramount Pictures is in talks with Chris Pine and director D.J. Caruso to fast-track the drama The Art of Making Money to start production early next year.

According to Variety, Brian Robbins is producing with Sharla Sumpter and Brad Weston. Frank Baldwin wrote the script.

If the deals are made, Pine will play Art Williams, the alias for a Chicago man who rose from petty theft to become a master counterfeiter.

Paramount acquired the project based on a 2005 Rolling Stone article by Jason Kersten, who turned his reporting into the book "The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter," which was published last summer by Gotham.

The Art of Making Money was released in 2010.