Disney is on the fast track to getting its epic historical film The Alamo cast, as it is scheduled to shoot into production under the direction of John Lee Hancock in January. One of the biggest names on the casting list is Billy Bob Thornton, who may be on the verge of signing a deal to play Davy Crockett, the famous frontiersman and one of the major characters in the film. Actors Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe, who were all but confirmed to be on board the project when it was in the hands of Ron Howard, will be courted again to star in the film as Lt. Col. William B. Travis and General Sam Houston, respectively. Crowe had reportedly walked away from the project when Howard did, but an opening in his schedule due to the delay of Ridley Scott's Tripoli may make him available for The Alamo. If Crowe doesn't sign on for the film, producers are hoping to get Lord of the Rings actor Viggo Mortensen for the part. Massive sets for The Alamo have been under construction for months in Texas, and are almost complete. Disney has budgeted the film at a whopping $75 million.

One of the action flick remakes currently circulating in the rumor mill is Arnold Schwarzenegger's supposed rehashing of the classic sci-fi thriller Westworld, which was written and directed by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton back in 1973. That film starred Yul Brynner as a robotic cowboy gone berserk in a futuristic theme park, a part that Schwarzenegger would bring back to life, hunting down the good guys and killing them off while the plastic falls from his metal skeleton. Sound familiar? The project has been only in the rumor stage to this point, partly because of the obvious Terminator similarities. But with some new muscle on board the project, a new Westworld may just get made. Ain't it Cool News reports that a source in the UK has a scoop that two other major action film stars - Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis - may just join Arnold for the film, which would give it a lot of credence as an event picture (seeing these three stars in the same film together for the first time would be a huge marketing device.) However, at this point, no major announcements have been made by any studios, and the project is still just an interesting bit of 'what if?' Hollywood gossip. Schwarzenegger is currently shooting the third Terminator film in Los Angeles, scheduled for release in summer of 2003.

Variety reports that actress Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man (2002)) is currently in talks to join the Jim Carrey film Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for director Michel Gondry. If she signs on, she would also join fellow cast member Kate Winslet in the project, written by Being John Malkovich (1999) and Human Nature (2001) scribe Charlie Kaufman. The story is about a guy who wants to have his memory of a horrible relationship erased from his brain, but runs into complications along the way - including seeing his ex in a whole new light and getting involved with a secretary at the memory clinic (the part Dunst would be up for). Dunst is currently finishing filming on the Julia Roberts film Mona Lisa Smile, after which she would ideally report to Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which begins shooting in January. She would then head to The Amazing Spider-Man, the spidey sequel that she has already signed on for and which will again star Tobey Maguire under the direction of Sam Raimi. That film is expected to his theaters in the summer of 2004.

Moody actor Val Kilmer has reportedly signed on to play late porn actor John Holmes in Wonderland, which tells the true story of Holmes' involvement, along with his young girlfriend, in a quadruple homicide on Wonderland Avenue in L.A. in 1981. Lions Gate Films is producing the film, and hopes to cast Lisa Kudrow (NBC's Friends), Josh Lucas (Sweet Home Alabama (2002)) and Kate Bosworth (Blue Crush (2002)) to co-star. Projects set in or around the porn industry are always tricky subjects, but the success of P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997) has caused more potential films with similar material to be put on the fast track. While Wonderland will be based on real people and events, Variety reports that another film entitled Superstar 81 will put fictional characters into a setting of pornographic filmmaking, as Anderson's film did. Wonderland is set to begin filming in November.

Robert De Niro has joined the project Godsend, which is a creepy thriller along the same lines as a Sixth Sense, about a grieving couple who turn to an expert in cell-stem research and cloning to bring back their dead 8-year old son. Nick Hamm (The Very Thought of You (1999)) will direct from a screenplay by Mark Bombeck, and Dimension Films will be distributing the picture. Greg Kinnear (Auto Focus (2002), We Were Soldiers (2002)) and Rebecca Romjin-Stamos (X-Men (2000)) are in talks to co-star as the married couple in the film, which will begin shooting in November for a target release date of late 2003. De Niro last starred in the drama City by the Sea (2002), which opened to tepid reviews and box office.

Kevin Williamson, the writer who brought life back to the teen horror film with Wes Craven's Scream series (he's also the writer of television's Dawson's Creek) is set to team up again with the thrilling director for a new movie that Dimension Films is hoping to turn into a franchise. Cursed is an old project that came and went briefly in 2000, and looks to be back on track for production. It's a story about a serial killer that involves the werewolf myth, and it will take place in Los Angeles. The studio hopes to catch lighting in a bottle again, as they did with the success on Scream. Cursed will go into production in the next couple of months, with an eye towards a release date of August next year.

Another film about an unsolved serial killer case is coming to a big screen near you. Zodiac, about the strange murders that terrorized San Francisco and the surrounding areas in the 60's and 70's, has been optioned by Phoenix Pictures now that the books on which the story will be based are no longer in the hands of Disney. Robert Graysmith, who wrote the two most popular books about the Zodiac killer, worked as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle during the time when the murderer was committing his deeds and sending taunting letters to the paper. Graysmith will serve as a co-producer on the film, which will put him in the story as the lead character, who goes about trying to solve the mystery while dealing with conflicting investigations by the police. In his books, Graysmith always believed he had identified who the murderer was, but through the loopholes of the official criminal investigation, his suspect was never arrested and subsequently died in the early 90's. The Zodiac killer has been the subject of films before, albeit indirectly - he was the inspiration for the murderer in the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry (1971).

It's well known that there is a sequel in the works for the family/kids adventure movie Scooby-Doo (2002), a film that garnered a whipping from critics but still managed to be a relative success at theaters. All the principal cast signed on for sequels when they first came on board the film, and the second film in the series is expected to hit cinemas in the summer of 2004. Well, it looks like Warner Bros. hasn't quite had enough of Scooby - with a full two years before the release of the second film, a third Scooby snack is already in the pipeline. Screenwriters Dan Forman and Paul Foley, who also wrote a big screen, live action version of The Jetsons, are writing the story which is expected to see the return of the original cast from the first film. There is no word yet on the potential plot of either Scooby-Doo 2 or Scooby-Doo 3, but the studio seems confident in their ability to make a successful franchise out of the popular 70's cartoon.

And no, we're not talking about his inevitable descent into the Dark Side as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in Lucas' upcoming third film in the Star Wars legacy. Hayden Christensen will be joining Don Cheadle and Vince Vaughn in the thriller The Other Side of Simple, which finds a group of thieves reuniting in their home town a decade after they committed a crime and one of their number was caught. Now hoping to use him again for another job, the three run into complications when the patsy they had take a dive before proves to have grown more intelligent during the ten-year absence. Joseph Ruben (Money Train (1995), Return to Paradise (1998)) will be directing the picture, from a script by Eric Kmetz. New Line Cinema will distribute the film. Christensen will next be seen in the film Shattered Glass, based on the true story of a successful journalist who was caught making up his stories. That film is expected to hit theaters next year.

Spider-Man actress Kirsten Dunst will join Columbia Pictures' The Crimson Petal and the White, based on the novel by Michele Faber about a Victorian age prostitute who becomes involved with an upper-crust London family. According to Variety, Laura Ziskin will be producing the film (reuniting her with Dunst, as the two worked together on Sam Raimi's web-slinging superhero flick). The epic tale will give a modern strength of character to a woman who lived in a time and worked a trade that generally saw women as uneducated, second-class citizens. A self educated, wise woman, Dunst's character becomes involved with a prominent member of the family and helps him to realize his full potential. Ziskin is no stranger to the world of successful 'hooker with a heart of gold' stories - she executive produced the Julia Roberts film Pretty Woman (1990), generally considered to be the most successful rags to riches story ever and a movie which launched Roberts on her way to international stardom. A screenwriter and director for the film has not yet been announced.

Saturday Night Live's Jimmy Fallon has signed on to star opposite Claire Danes and Steve Martin in Shopgirl, to be directed by Anand Tucker. Shopgirl is based on Martin's novel of the same name, about a counter girl at a Neiman Marcus who gets involved in a romantic triangle between an older businessman and a young, struggling musician. Danes will play Mirabelle, the "shopgirl" of the title, with Martin and Fallon filling out the other two main roles, respectively. Fallon appeared onscreen recently in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), and Danes has spent her time recently on the independent fare The Hours (2002) and Igby Goes Down (2002), and will be seen in next summer's anticipated blockbuster Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Aside from being the funnyman comedian, Steve Martin is also an accomplished writer, and his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile was an off-Broadway success. Production on Shopgirl is expected to commence in January.

It appears as though director Terry Gilliam's vow to get involved with a film project before the end of the year may come to fruition. MGM has put on the fast track a project about the Brothers Grimm - a fantasy/historical adventure based on the lives of the famous writers that will incorporate elements of their fables into the story. The script, by Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road (1999)), tells the story of the brothers who move from one small village to the next under the ruse that they are "helping" protect the local people from magical creatures, along the way getting the material for their collection of folklore that would one day make them famous. Much to the surprise of the brothers, their travels lead to a brush with a real sorceress, an event that will test the limits of their skills. MGM is looking for the film to mix elements of high action with silly humor, and the studio feels that Gilliam is the perfect filmmaker to bring their vision to the big screen. Many Gilliam fans will note that his recent projects have a habit of falling apart, including an adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's novel Good Omens and his dream project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the collapse of which is the topic of the wonderful documentary Lost in La Mancha, a film currently making the film festival circuit. Production on Brothers Grimm is likely to begin sometime this spring.

Moody actor Val Kilmer has a lot on his plate these days. He's just signed on to play John Holmes in Wonderland, about the Wonderland Avenue murders in the early 80's down in Los Angeles, and after that he'll head into Blind Horizon, a thriller about a man who suffers from amnesia but tries to warn the local authorities in a small town about a potential presidential assassination attempt. The film will be directed by music video specialist Michael Haussman from a script written by Steve Tomlin and F. Paul Benz, and production on the film will commence in New Mexico. Kilmer's recent credits include Red Planet (2000), Pollock (2000) and the effective comic drama The Salton Sea (2002).

Director Frank Darabont is setting himself up to be a very busy man over the next couple of years. Currently working on the screenplay for the anticipated fourth installment of Indiana Jones, Darabont's production company Darkwoods Productions is setting up a project called The Way of the Rat, based on a comic book, as a film for Chuck Russell (The Scorpion King (2002)) to direct for DreamWorks. According to Variety, the next film he hopes to direct himself is an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, which Mel Gibson was attached to make at one point and whose Icon Productions will still help to produce. Darabont also has a first-look deal at Castle Rock, where he made films like The Green Mile (1999) and The Majestic (2002), and where he hopes to get other projects including Runt of the Litter and Mine into production.

Robert Redford is looking to reprise a role he made famous 30 years ago, as plans are underway for a sequel to The Candidate, a film about a young lawyer who makes a bid to win a seat in the Senate. In addition to producing and directing the picture, Redford would star once again as Bill McKay, as we catch up to him years later. Variety reports that Redford and writer Larry Gelbart (Bedazzled (2000)) are collaborating on the project together, which Warner Bros. will likely produce. Redford was most recently seen in The Last Castle (2001) and Spy Game (2001).

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