Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are eyeing up the long-gestating Shane Black noir The Nice Guys, reports The Wrap. The film will see director Black, the screenwriter of early instalments of the Lethal Weapon series, returning to the genre which served him well for 2005's well-received Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

The Nice Guys, which Black will co-write with Anthony Bagarozzi, centres on two men investigating the apparent suicide of a female porn star whose career was on the slide.

A log line released in 2011 for a reading of the script revealed: "In smoggy 1970s Los Angeles, Jackson Healy (muscle-for-hire, recovering alcoholic) and Holland March (private eye, practicing alcoholic) are brought together by the suicide of a fading porn star. Problem is, the dead girl's aunt is convinced she saw her niece alive and well, after the highly publicised incident. March needs money, takes the case, and within days, it's blossomed into a far-reaching murder conspiracy, bizarrely rooted in smog and the US auto industry."

Black's screenplay for 1987's Lethal Weapon helped spawn a hugely successful four-film franchise, but he famously fell out with producers over his proposal to kill off Mel Gibson's character Riggs in the sequel. Almost two decades on, after the success of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he was given a shot by Marvel Studios at the superhero sequel Iron Man 3 last year. Both films starred Robert Downey Jr, with the latter making more than $1bn at the global box office.

The Nice Guys will also see Black reunite with the Hollywood super-producer Joel Silver, with whom he worked on the Lethal Weapon films, and is being put together at studio Warner Bros.