Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon is about to take on one of those kinds of roles that may give her the thumbs-up for another Oscar nod in the future.

Both director Joe Carnahan and Witherspoon are currently in talks to work together to do a remake of “Bunny Lake is Missing,” a mystery and gripping psychological thriller that is based on the 1965 Otto Preminger film.

“Bunny Lake” centers on the events that occur after a woman reports that her daughter Bunny Lake has gone missing. When police find no evidence that she even existed, they begin to question the woman’s sanity.

“Quills” writer Doug Wright (Pulitzer Prize playwright of “I Am My Own Wife”) is working on a rewrite of his own Bunny script with Carnahan.

My advice is to buy or rent the original Preminger version first, just for the sheer joy of watching a master filmmaker at work, and then go and see the remake by Carnahan to compare.

The new “Bunny Lake Is Missing” should be in theaters sometime in late 2007 or early 2008, if all the chess pieces fall into place.