Chris Evans is our new Gene Kelly… but will he finally tap dance?

Chris Evans is off to a busy—and somewhat iconic—start to 2022. The Avenger has not only reportedly signed onto a pretty high-profile project involving performer Gene Kelly, but he came up with the idea for the film.

According to Deadline, Evans is only rumoured, at this point, to be playing the iconic actor and dancer in a new untitled film, which revolves around a 12-year-old boy who works at the MGM lot in 1952. There, he begins an imaginary friendship with Kelly, who would have been about 40 years old in real-life at that time.

So could Evans pull off such an iconic role? Well, he’s no stranger to fan pressure, thanks to his time with the MCU. But Kelly is definitely a different kind of character, given that the actor, dancer, choreographer and director has been credited with helping to transform the movie musical back in his day.

He was also a big tap dancer who helped push that form of artistic expression forward (he once tap-danced in roller skates for It’s Always Fair Weather), and that may be the key to Evans' interest in playing him. You see, for those who don’t know, Captain America also has a penchant for tap dancing. And he’s kind of screamed it from the rooftops over the years, and at one point he even admitted to Seth Meyers that he’s “no Gene Kelly,” but yep, he’s into it.

“We grew up tap-dancing,” Evans told E! News back in 2011. “My mother was a dancer for a long time. We had a tap floor in our basement. So, my brothers and sisters and I got lessons. We were the Von Trapps.”

Could this be the project Evans has been waiting for to make his non-soft-shoe debut? (Well, other than his brief ditty at the end of the 2014 movie Playing It Cool?) We can only hope.

For now, we do know that if this movie pushes forward, it will be written by three-time Oscar nominee John Logan (Penny Dreadful) and produced by Logan, Evans, and T-Street Productions, a.k.a. Ram Bergman and Rian Johnson’s company. Does that mean Chris Evans as Gene Kelly could sport a trademark sweater a la Knives Out? The possibilities do seem endless.

In the meantime, we can all look forward to some of Evans’ other upcoming projects, which include Lightyear (he voices Buzz Lightyear); The Russo Brothers’ Gray Man alongside Ana de Armas, Ryan Gosling, Billy Bob Thornton and Regé-Jean Page; and a couple of other rumoured projects including Little Shop of Horrors and Bermuda.

2022 is looking up indeed.

BEFORE YOU GO: Inside the 'Harry Potter' cast reunion