Matt Damon is adding yet another esteemed filmmaker to his incredible resume.  After having worked with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul Greengrass, Anthony Minghella, Steven Soderbergh, Terry Gilliam, The Coen Brothers, etc., Damon is now poised to team up with Alexander Payne on the Nebraska filmmaker’s next project.  Deadline reports that Damon will lead Downsizing, which is described as a social satire and revolves around a guy who “realizes he would have a better life if he were to shrink himself.”  Payne co-wrote the film with his Sideways co-writer Jim Taylor, and the 20th Century Fox picture will be Payne’s next movie.  More after the jump, including what other project this knocks off Damon’s schedule.

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Image via Parmaount

Further plot details are unknown for Downsizing at this time, but I’m very curious to find out if the aforementioned “shrinking” is literal or figurative—could Payne be making his own Innerspace reboot?  Regardless, this is Payne’s next movie, and Deadline reports that it takes Damon out of the running for Legendary’s China-set The Great Wall, which will be directed by Zhang Yimou.

Downsizing comes on the heels of a pair of more dramatic pictures from Payne, Nebraska and The Descendants, but the description of it as a "social satire" gives me hope that maybe Payne might be returning to a type of film more in the vein of Election, which I still think is his best.

Damon will next shoot Kenneth Lonergan’s drama Manchester-By-The-Sea, after which he is set to lead Ridley Scott’s sci-fi picture The Martian.  Those two projects will be made back-to-back for Damon, and he’s also poised to reunite with Greengrass for another Bourne movie, though that picture probably won’t begin production until later next year.  It’s unclear where Downsizing fits into Damon’s schedule, but I imagine it might start filming sometime in the second quarter of 2015.  As an actor, Damon has truly worked with an impossibly high number of the best filmmakers around, and Payne puts yet another notch in his belt.