Vincent Cassel and Viggo Mortensen are set to reunite for a sequel to Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg's brutal 2007 tale of Russian gangsters in the London underworld, reports Vulture.

A follow-up to the critically acclaimed thriller has been gestating since at least March 2010, but there is now talk of it shooting at the start of 2013. Cronenberg will direct and Steven Knight, who wrote Eastern Promises, is also returning. Cassel is reportedly in negotiations, while Mortensen has already signed on.

In the earlier movie, Kirill (Cassel) was the out-of-control scion of an equally ruthless mob family operating in the capital, while Nikolai (Mortensen) was the driver and "cleaner" with an unexpected moral compass. Vulture reports that part two will pick up where the earlier venture left off, with Kirill under the impression that he and his henchman have inherited the throne from his crime-lord father. In reality, Nikolai is a clandestine agent working undercover in Russia's federal security service.

The last time the prospect of a sequel emerged, Cassel said it would see the two mobsters returning home. "We talked very seriously about it, and it's going to be shot in Russia," He told comingsoon.net in 2010. "There's a really good script, and Cronenberg wants to do it. I told them that whenever they're ready, I'm there."

Mortensen and Cassel also appeared in Cronenberg's well-received A Dangerous Method last year, an adaptation of Christopher Hampton's play The Talking Cure also starring Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender. The film focused on the relationships between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and a troubled Russian woman named Sabina Spielrein who went on to become one of the first female psychoanalysts in her own right.

Cronenberg's latest venture, an adaptation of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis will be released in UK cinemas on Friday. It stars Robert Pattinson as a young billionaire making his way across New York in a limo while an anticapitalist riot rages outside.