Damon to start work on what is believed to be Father Daughter Time early next year.

Matt Damon is moving ahead with his directorial debut, and has offered the name of one of his stars.

Speaking to Vulture, he said: “I’ve got a few things that I really want to direct, and one I’m actually going to start at the first quarter of next year.”

It’s thought to be Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses, a script from Matthew Aldrich picked up by Warner Bros. as a starring vehicle for Damon. The plotline has a “man who goes on the lam with his daughter, his accomplice on a three-state crime spree.” Aldrich described it as “a smallish, very personal, dark but playful road movie about a father and daughter.”

It’s been rumoured that Damon will direct, as he had been planning to get behind the camera for The Trade, a true wife-swapping baseball movie that was set to star him and best mate Ben Affleck. That project is now on hold my legal reasons.

Damon wouldn’t confirm if Father Daughter Time is in fact the film he will direct, but did mention that John Krasinski would be in it.

The star of the US version of The Office is married to Damon’s Adjustment Bureau co-star Emily Blunt, and has popped up on the big screen in Something Borrowed, It’s Complicated, License To Wed and Away We Go. He’ll next be seen in The Muppets and Everybody Loves Whales. Krasinski himself made his directorial debut in 2009 with Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

Meanwhile, Damon is having a busy 2011 in his day job as actor, starring in Neill Blompkamp’s Elysium, Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace and Contagion, and Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo.

MALONE — Academy Award-winning screenwriter and actor Matt Damon was in Malone Wednesday, apparently learning more about wind farms.

The star of “Good Will Hunting” and “The Bourne Identity” franchise could also be gathering information for a film he is rumored to be making for his directorial debut.

The lunch crowd at Jon’s Family Restaurant on Finney Boulevard was abuzz with people getting their picture taken with Damon and actor John Krasinski, who plays Jim Halpert on the NBC sitcom “The Office.”

One of the fans who got close Wednesday was Katie Nason, who works at Giggles and Wiggles child-care center in Malone.

“It was pretty exciting. I was there with my husband, and my in-laws were arriving,” she said.

There was a lot of commotion at a table behind them, with the waitresses and restaurant staff crowding around and taking pictures with a man in a hat and glasses.

“My husband said, ‘It must be somebody famous,’” Nason said.

She said she got a look at who it was causing the excitement, “and I lost my breath. It took me 10 minutes to go over there and talk to him.

“I was like, ‘I can’t not get this.’ My mother-in-law took the picture on her iPod.

“He was very polite and just as cute in person,” Nason said. “You could tell he was used to it.”

The actors were apparently in the area to learn more about wind farms for a future movie and were accompanied by Town Council member Jack Sullivan, a vocal wind-farm opponent.

Sullivan could not be immediately reached for comment.

Damon is the co-founder of H2O Africa and Water.org, which work to improve living conditions in developing countries through clean water.

The film Damon might direct and star in is tentatively called “Father and Daughter,” according to a website entry for New York Magazine.

“I’ve got a few things that I really want to direct, and one I’m actually going to start at the first quarter of next year,” he said in the article.

He would play a criminal on the run with his daughter.

Damon would not say much about the film but did tell the magazine, “John Krasinski is in it.”