Chris Evans to step into Gene Kelly’s dancing shoes for upcoming film

The world may soon find out. Deadline announced this week that Evans himself came up with an idea for an upcoming film project, in which a 12-year-old on the MGM studio lot in 1952 develops an imaginary friendship with the great Gene Kelly. In the year the film is set, Kelly would have been still coasting off of the greatness of On The Town and An American In Paris while preparing for the release of the iconic Singin’ In The Rain, so we should hope that there would be at least a few dance numbers in there.

Deadline says that Evans will also produce the project along with Mark Kassen, Rian Johnson’s and Ram Bergman’s T-Street Productions, and Academy Award nominee John Logan (The Aviator, Spectre, Skyfall), who also will write the script.

Even though the only Chris Evans dance number that comes to mind is that promotional tour that Captain America did back in WWII, rumors of Evans tap dancing have hovered around the talk-show circuit for a while. Apparently he took lessons as a kid, and has mentioned Kelly before (which makes sense; he definitely seems more like a Gene Kelly guy than a Fred Astaire guy). He even unveiled some not-bad soft shoe on Ellen. Can he also pull off a heartfelt dance number with an umbrella, swinging around a lamppost while getting drenched with buckets of water? We shall see (hopefully).