Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who's played everyone from a teenage detective to the leader of an international terrorist organization, is aiming to enter the action area with a pair of films.

Heat Vision reports the actor is in final negotiations to star in Premium Rush, a chase thriller directed by David Koepp (Stir of Echoes), and in talks to take the lead in Looper, a sci-fi thriller that would reunite him with Brick director Rian Johnson.

In Columbia Pictures' Premium Rush, which is also written by Koeep, Gordon-Levitt plays a New York City bike messenger who picks up an envelope at Columbia University, only to be pursued by a dirty cop who wants it.

From there Gordon-Levitt could move on to Looper, Johnson's follow-up to 2008's The Brothers Bloom (Gordon-Levitt and Brick co-star Lukas Haas both had uncredited cameos). The sci-fi film is set in a near-future in which operatives are sent back to the present to assassinate criminals. Gordon-Levitt would play a man sent to kill himself. Johnson has set up a cryptic Tumblr blog to tease the picture.