LA Times has more details on the plot of the still untitled Terrence Malick project with Rachel and Ben Affleck. Several distributors were interested in but Terrence Malick declined. The movie is expected to release in 2012. Be sure to read the article below:

But there’s a movie that will be ready before either of those, an untitled film (formerly called “The Burial”) starring Ben Affleck (who actually replaced Bale) that Malick shot right after he finished editing “The Tree of Life.” He’s tweaking the movie in the editing room now, and it’s expected to be finished by next year (though that doesn’t mean a distributor that buys it will bring out then).

The company selling rights to the movie, FilmNation, has been secretive, to say the least, about the details (think executives reading the script in locked offices, and the “Men in Black” amnesia-laser administered afterward). Malick’s been protective, too. Several U.S. distributors made offers just on the basis of the script and some footage, said a person familiar with negotiations. So far, he’s declined to sell it.

So what’s the movie really about?

There have been scattered reports about it, but according to a person who read the script, it’s a love triangle with an international subtext. It’s also the only film Malick has ever done that’s set in the same time as the period in which he’s making it.

Here’s the breakdown, with the caveat that things could change drastically from script to screen (on “Tree,” Malick would sometimes rewrite scenes on the day of the shoot).

Basically, it concerns a philanderer (Affleck) who, feeling at loose ends, travels to Paris, where he enters a hot-and-heavy affair with a European woman (Olga Kurylenko). Said Lothario returns home to Oklahoma, where he marries the European woman (in part for visa reasons). When the relationship founders, he rekindles a romance with a hometown girl (Rachel McAdams) with whom he’s had a long history.

According to the person who read the script, there’s a bit of a happier ending than some other Malick movies (or at least a less ambiguous one than at the end of “Tree”). And a person who saw the footage said there’s also the trademark visual showiness–shots of Affleck and McAdams in Malick’s trademark man-in-nature style–as well as intriguing supporting actors: Javier Bardem, for instance, plays a priest whom Affleck’s Lothario visits for advice.

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