What did Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise have in common? A role in the thriller “Edwin A. Salt.” It seems that the actress will take Tom Cruises part in the new spy thriller. According to Variety, Tom Cruise was expected to play the part, but the role was adapted so that Angelina Jolie could play it.

The original script was originally written so that a male actor would fit the part, but Jolie’s interest for the part made the writers change the role. “Edwin A. Salt,” a Columbia Pictures espionage thriller, will be released in 2010. Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer made the adjustments to the part so that Angelina Jolie could take Tom Cruise’s place.

(EFlux)

It may be a controversial project.

Clooney’s movie production company, Smokehouse, bought the book rights from journalist Jonathan Mahler, who in “The Challenge” tells the story of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni resident of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in recent years after his capture for being the driver of Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.

(LA Times)

“Inglorious Bastards” is Quentin Tarantino’s next movie and Eli Roth, the director of “Hostel”, is among the actors who will star in it. Tarantino’s movie is about World War II and Roth is to play Sergent Donnie Donowitz, a not so normal Nazi enemy, described as a “baseball bat-swinging Nazi hunter”.

Rumor has it that Leonardo Di Caprio was eyed for the bad guy’s part, the role of SS Col. Hans Landa, but it seems he changed his mind and decided to give the role to a German actor.

The second rumor is about Brad Pitt, who may star as Aldo Raine, the leader of the band of Jewish U.S. soldiers who are out to get some Nazis killed.

(EFlux Media)

Rocker Sting’s wife Trudie Styler has acquired film rights to the upcoming graphic novel “American Reaper.”

The story is set in a future where identity theft leads to victims having their minds erased and replaced by those of the elderly rich seeking a second youth or by criminals and terrorists with more sinister motives. A team of special agents, known as Reapers, are formed to track down and terminate those responsible.

(Reuters)

Leonardo DiCaprio is eyeing a big-screen remake of cult television series “The Twilight Zone,” it was reported Friday.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way is seeking script ideas for a film based on the classic television series, which spanned more than 150 episodes between 1959 and 1964.

The report said a “Twilight Zone” feature film would probably be a passion project for DiCaprio, who has cited the series as his favorite show.

The Oscar-nominated star of 2006 hits “Blood Diamond” and “The Departed” will next be seen later this year in the Ridley Scott-directed spy thriller “Body of Lies” and the Sam Mendes drama “Revolutionary Road.”

During a break on the set of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — described to us as a “remote air force base” at an “undisclosed location” — horror franchise reviver and blockbuster director extraordinaire Michael Bay hopped on the phone to give us the scoop on the Transformers sequel, his other projects in the works, and his reaction to that Dark Knight script circling the Internet with his name on it…

(EW)

Michelle Williams is making a movie about Heath Ledger so their two-year-old daughter can see what her dad was really like.

The actress - who was left devastated when her former fiance was found dead in his apartment after an accidental drug overdose in January - wants the actor’s friends and co-stars to share their stories on him so little Matilda can see her father through their eyes.

(Australian News)

Although only one book has been written (and not yet published), The 39 Clues is already mapped out to include a ten book series, as well as a set of collectable cards and an online adventure game set up to give participants a shot at a $10,000 prize. It only makes sense, then, to adapt the up and coming franchise into a movie as well, with the possibility of one of Hollywood’s biggest names involved.

DreamWorks/Paramount has picked up the film rights to The 39 Clues, reports Variety, which is scheduled to become a phenomenon this fall by Scholastic Books.

(Cinema Blend)

Dylan Thomas, dead for 55 years, still continues to fascinate. And, moreover, fascinate the famous to an unusual degree. If a rock star, or indeed a film star, has heard of a poet, then that poet is going to be Dylan Thomas.

Mick Jagger, for instance, owns the rights to his 1939 collection, The Map of Love, and made John Maybury, director of The Edge of Love (about Dylan Thomas’s relationship with his wife Caitlin and Vera Phillips) remove everything from that book that had been in the film, under pain of legal action. For Jagger intends to make his own film about the poet.

(The Guardian UK)

The film director Guy Ritchie, husband of Madonna, is to try to revive his career by giving Sherlock Holmes a gritty, gangland-style makeover.

Ritchie is best known for his violent 1998 hit Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but has had little success since.

The Hollywood studio Warner Bros is backing his attempt to repackage Holmes from his tweedy, cerebral image into a sword-wielding fist-fighter with a short fuse.

In Los Angeles last week, an executive at Warner said it was looking for a “grungy” Holmes. “This is Sherlock Holmes as a street-fighting man, ready to take on man, monsters, whatever the world can throw at him.”

(Times Online)