Father Geek here along with our buddy Elston for another of our regular week-in-review feature columns. This one's loaded to the gills with bite-sized tidbits of info you may have missed during the past work-week, sooooo sit back, grab a steaming mug of whatever, and prepare to dig into this edition of...

THE WEEKLY RECAP...

TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

CASTING

* Andre Benjamin (aka Dre of Outkast) and Shannyn Sossamon (THE RULES OF ATTRACTION) will star in LOVE HATER for director Morgan J. Freeman. It's set in the mid-1970s, and centers on an upper-middle-class musical prodigy Valentine and lower-class free spirit Chevon, whose families don't want them to be together.

* Joan Cusack has joined two Paramount pics, the comedy SCHOOL OF ROCK opposite Jack Black and the remake of THE STEPFORD WIVES starring Nicole Kidman.

* Kate Beckinsale will star opposite Hugh Jackman in VAN HELSING for director Stephen Sommers and Universal.

* Frankie Muniz is attached to star in an untitled bachelor party project at MGM. He'll play an inexperienced younger brother who must plan the big night for his older sibling after the best man is jailed and unable to perform the task. MGM grabbed the pitch from Andrew Jacobson and Adam Jay Epstein (NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE).

* Jimmy Fallon will star in Miramax's remake of the acclaimed French comedy TANGUY about a 28-year-old man who lives alone with his parents and is rapidly overstaying his welcome.

* Steven Seagal will star in a remake of the 1975 thriller THE YAKUZA as well as THE RESCUE. YAKUZA was originally scripted by Paul Schrader and Robert Towne and directed by Sydney Pollack. It merges Japanese lore with the story of gangsters kidnapping the daughter of an L.A. shipping magnate. In RESCUE, Seagal will play a former Vietnam vet who begins exchanging letters with an orphan in Eastern Europe that he's helping out financially. When the letters cease, he heads to Europe to find out what happened to the child.

* Hank Azaria joins the cast of Universal Pictures/Jersey Films' untitled romantic comedy written by John Hamburg, who also directs. Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Debra Messing, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Alec Baldwin also star.

* Donald Sutherlan, Greta Scacchi and Jurgen Prochnow will star in the indie political thriller BALTIC STORM, based on the book by Jutta Rabe, for writer/director Reuben Leder. It centers on the true story of a German journalist who uncovers a possible military conspiracy behind the 1994 sinking of the Estonia, in which nearly 900 people drowned. The journalist thinks a secret cargo of high-tech weapons may have made the passenger ship a target.

* Keanu Reeves will play an emergency room doctor in the untitled Columbia Pictures comedy written and to be directed by Nancy Meyers. Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton also star in the project about an aging man with a successful career and a beautiful girlfriend young enough to be his daughter. However, his life is turned around when he falls for his girlfriend's mother after suffering a heart attack. Shooting starts Feb. 5. Frances McDormand is in talks to play Keaton's sister. Reeves will also star in THUMBSUCKER, an indie adaptation of the Walter Kirn novel about an orally fixated man whose thumbsucking habit is cured through hypnosis. He'll then move on to CONSTANTINE for Warner Bros.

* Scott Glenn and Harvey Keitel are joining the indie romantic thriller PUERTO VALLARTA SQUEEZE, based on the novel by Robert James Waller, about an American government hit man on the run who enlists the aid of two innocent travelers in his attempt to escape through the wilds of Mexico. Miguel Sandoval, Craig Wasson, Jonathan Brandis and newcomer Giovanna Zacarias also star. Arthur Allan Seidelman is directing the script by Richard Alfieri, Craig Fernandez and Ami Canaan Mann.

* Morgan Freeman and Jet Li are in talks to star in the thriller DANNY THE DOG for Luc Besson's Europa Corp. Production begins next month in the United Kingdom, with studio shooting scheduled to take place in France. Besson wrote the script with Robert Mark Kamen and Louis Leterrier (THE TRANSPORTER) will direct.

* Mary Steenburgen, Zooey Deschanel, Bob Newhart and Ed Asner are in talks to join New Line's ELF for director Jon Favreau, starring Will Ferrell and James Caan.

* Robert De Niro will star in the Fox comedy-drama RULE NUMBER THREE about an arrogant firearms tycoon who attempts to bully a seemingly average guy; the latter turns out to be an accomplished assassin who decides to give the gun guy a serious lesson in humility. Rob Bowman is in talks to direct from a script by Robert Kuhn.

* Will Smith is in talks to star in 20th Century Fox's I, ROBOT, based on Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction book series, for director Alex Proyas (DARK CITY). Jeff Vintar penned the adaptation about a society in which robots function alongside human beings in a servile capacity and are both harmless and helpful. The plot centers on a technophobic police officer who is called in to investigate a murder that he believes was committed by a robot and uncovers a giant conspiracy.

* Selma Blair will star opposite Ron Perlman in Revolution Studios' HELLBOY, based on the Dark Horse Comic, for writer/director Guillermo Del Toro. Production begins in March in Prague.

* Breckin Meyer will do the English voiceover of the title role in Roberto Benigni's live-action adaptation of PINOCCHIO. Benigni spent two weeks working on the voiceovers himself, but wasn't satisfied with them. He and Miramax then decided to go with all English-speaking actors. Glenn Close , Cheech Marin, Kevin James, Queen Latifah and Eddie Griffin will also lend their voices.

* Rob Schneider is in final talks to star in THE ADVENTURES OF SINBAD THE INSURANCE SALESMAN for Paramount about an insurance company employee who's unlucky in love until he meets a girl who changes his life. Mike Reiss ("The Simpsons" ) wrote the script.

* Wesley Snipes (BLADE) will star in the sci-fi action pic JOHN DOE for Revolution Studios and writer/director Zak Penn. It's about a homeless man with severe memory loss who tries to recover his former life. As he is putting the pieces back together he also discovers that he has superhuman abilities he can't explain. He goes on a quest to uncover his true identity, and the answer proves to be more terrifying than he ever imagined.

* Julia Stiles is in talks to star in Paramount Pictures/Lions Gate Films' romantic comedy THE PRINCE AND THE FRESHMAN for director Martha Coolidge and Sobini Films. The project chronicles the romance between a British prince and a small-town American girl. The two meet at the Indiana university to which the feisty, motorcycle-driving girl received a scholarship and where the prince spends his "gap" year fulfilling his dream of living in the real world by posing as a regular student. Their love is challenged when it is publicly exposed, and the queen of England must take drastic measures.

* Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton will star in United Artists' CODE 46 for director Michael Winterbottom and producer Andrew Eaton. Production begins next month in London. Frank Cottrell Boyce has written the love story set in the future and centers on a man and woman who have an affair. They go on the run when authorities begin to hunt them down after finding out that the woman was cloned using the DNA from the man's mother.

* Matthew Lillard will star opposite Josh Hartnett in the thriller WICKER PARK for MGM, Lakeshore Entertainment and director Paul McGuigan. Production begins Dec. 16 in Montreal. It's based on the 1996 film L'APPARTEMENT about a man and his obsessive search for a lost love from his past that ends up uncovering the twisted machinations of an eccentric secret admirer. Rose Byrne and Diane Kruger also star.

DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS

* Jonathan Demme is in talks to direct Denzel Washington in the remake of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. Production will begin next fall from a script by Daniel Pyne (THE SUM OF ALL FEARS).

* Pat Proft (WRONGFULLY ACCUSED), Brian Lynch (BIG HELIUM DOG), Craig Mazin (SENSELESS) and Kevin Smith (CLERKS) will write SCARY MOVIE 3 for Dimension Films and director David Zucker (AIRPLANE!). Smith will also co-executive produce. Production is expected to begin in February.

* Lasse Hallstrom will direct Universal's BOMBSHELL! as a potential starring vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio. It's based on the 1997 book BOMBSHELL: THE SECRET STORY OF AMERICA'S UNKNOWN ATOMIC SPY CONSPIRACY, which is a sympathetic portrait of Theodore Hall, a young nuclear scientist recruited for the Manhattan Project while still a teen. Hall feared an American monopoly on nuclear secrets and passed classified data to the Soviet Union. He was never prosecuted, though historians claim he may have started the Cold War.

* Antoine Fuqua is in talks to direct Warner Bros. Pictures' STRANGERS, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, for Kopelson Entertainment. David Seltzer penned the screenplay about a tennis pro who wants to kill his and a cultured eccentric who wants to kill his own father. The two end up trading murders. Alfred Hitchcock directed an adaptation in 1951

* Spyglass Entertainment has tapped writer Mick Davis to pen an American remake of his Swedish supernatural drama THE INVISIBLE. It's about a teenager who is assaulted and killed but returns as a ghost to find his killer.

* Emmett/Furla Films grabbed ths script PAST TENSE from writer Paul da Silva for the company to produce with Benderspink. It's about a San Francisco cop who teams with a Hong Kong cop whose partner has gone rogue, intent on stealing a weapons system that could threaten the safety of America.

* Frank Cappello will adapt the Tom Clancy novel RAINBOW SIX for Paramount. The novel focuses on CIA agent John Clark, an ex-Navy SEAL who joins with several colleagues to leave the CIA and create an England-based multinational organization designed to battle terrorism.

* Disney optioned the rights to the children's book CINDA ELLEN: A WILD WESTERN CINDERELLA by Susan Lowell for a potential musical feature for the studio. Ross Venokur will write the script, tentatively titled ONCE UPON A PRAIRIE. It's a Western twist on the classic Cinderella tale about a young tomboy whose father dies in a ranching accident. When Cinda's stepmother puts the family in financial jeopardy buying clothes and jewels for her and her own daughters, Cinda decides to enter the rodeo disguised as a boy to pay off the debt.

* Engelhart Investment Group is teaming with director Dimitri Logothetis and writer/producer Nicholas Celozzi on a biopic of mobster Sam Giancana.

* Les Mayfield will direct the buddy action comedy THE MAN, starring Eugene Levy, for New Line. Jim Piddock and Margaret Oberman wrote the project about two undercover Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents with opposite personalities who team up to bust an illegal weapons ring.

* Mark Leyner will do a rewrite on B-MAJOR for Universal/Imagine and director Ron Howard. It's set in 1970 in Scranton, Pa. and centers on a discouraged young singer and his pal -- an alcoholic pianist -- who decide to break the record for marathon piano playing, but the ordeal winds up being more than the singer bargained for.

* Karyn Kusama (GIRLFIGHT) is developing THE INVISIBLE X, about a womanizing bachelor advertising executive who slowly undergoes an unexplained transformation. The exec attempts to come to grips with the new identity while living in a homeless shelter.

* Max Allan Collins (ROAD TO PERDITION) will write A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL, based on his own short story, for Yume Pictures Entertainment and director Jeffrey Goodman. It centers on a retired hit man who finds that doing one last "job" is just what he needs to battle his relentless insomnia.

* MGM and producer Arthur Sarkissian are a developing a remake of Stanley Kramer's 1958 thriller THE DEFIANT ONES, which starred Tony Curtis and Sydney Poitier, about escaped convicts bound at the wrist. Sarkissian has also acquired remake rights to EL CID, Anthony Mann's 1961 epic, which starred Charlton Heston. Martin Campbell is attached to direct.

* Lucky McKee (MAY) is attached to direct David Ross' horror script THE WOODS for United Artists and Furst Films. The story begins when a young girl's parents drop their neglected daughter off at a remote boarding school in the forest. When the girl's classmates begin disappearing from the school, she tries to discover the root of the problem and finds it's related to a mysterious dwelling in the woods.

* Focus Features picked up the modern comedy script SENIORS by Jon Zack about a hard-partying eighth-year senior who develops a friend-ship with an eccentric older woman after accidentally crashing his car into her property. Forced to do repair work on her house, he ends up developing a rapport with her that changes their lives.

* James Kearns (JOHN Q) will write an untitled feature about Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Robert Capa for Disney. The studio grabbed the rights to his autobiography SLIGHTLY OUT OF FOCUS: THE ROBERT CAPA STORY and Richard Whelan's ROBERT CAPA: A BIOGRAPHY. The project will be a romantic epic that takes place between 1943 and D-Day, focusing on Capa's own love affair with an Englishwoman against the backdrop of WWII, as well as on Capa's efforts to leave the U.S. as an enemy alien and cover the war overseas.

* Phillip Noyce has optioned feature film rights to Tim Winton's novel DIRT MUSIC with plans to produce and direct. It's the story of a woman who finds herself stranded in a relationship with a man she doesn't love in the small fishing village of Whitepoint in Western Australia. An encounter with a poacher and local pariah results in an affair that dredges up secrets and changes all of their shattered lives forever.

* Universal Pictures has tapped Hans Rodionoff to script a potential horror franchise based on Clive Barker and Todd McFarlane's TORTURED SOULS action figure line. The six grisly Tortured Soul characters were each sold with a chapter of an original Barker-penned storyline. When combined, the chapters form a novella outlining the Souls' origins. Barker wrote a treatment based on that novella, but the ultimate plot remains unclear.

* Guillermo Arriaga (AMORES PERROS) will write Universal Pictures' DALLAS BUYERS CLUB for Universal and director Marc Forster. The project tells the story of Ron Woodroof, a redneck electrician who contracted HIV around 1980 and developed full-blown AIDS by 1986. Told to "go home and die," he instead went on to found one of the most risky and effective AIDS-related disease management efforts at the time.

* Jonathan Liebesman is in talks to direct Universal Pictures' THE IMMORTALS about four twentysomething friends who are presented with the opportunity to become immortal but must first choose someone to die in their place.

* Pandemonium Films has picked up the comedy script ZILLION from writer Dwayne Alexander Smith. The story revolves around a dashing billionaire supersleuth named Matthew Zillion who teams up with a no-nonsense female detective in New York to crush an international drug ring.

* Jamie Blanks (URBAN LEGEND) will direct the supernatural thriller THE RITUAL for Tapestry Films. Sheldon Turner wrote the script about two undergraduates who cross the path of a group of co-eds who are practicing black magic in order to manipulate other students.

MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS

* Paramount Pictures will develop 21 JUMP STREET, based on the 1987-90 Fox series created by Stephen J. Cannell and Patrick Hasburgh, who will also write the script. The show centered on a group of fresh-faced police officers who are assigned undercover duty, returning to high school to crack crimes and bust drug dealers.

* Artisan Entertainment is developing a second VEGGIETALES feature, THE BOB AND LARRY MOVIE, featuring Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber. The picture is set for a 2005 release.

* MGM snapped up the rights to Ben Mezrich's BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: THE INSIDE STORY OF SIX M.I.T. STUDENTS WHO TOOK VEGAS FOR MILLIONS for Trigger Street Prods. to develop. It's the true story about a group of students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings.

* Roger Marino and Michael Corrente have formed Revere Pictures, which is currently financing five titles, including DOOR IN THE FLOOR, director Tod Williams' adaptation of A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR with Jeff Bridges attached to star; and BLACK IRISH, a comedy chronicling the hijinks of two African-Americans from Detroit who win a pub in Ireland. The company is in post-production on three pics, including Mike Hodges' (CROUPIER) I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD, starring Clive Owen; WHEN ZACHARY BEAVER CAME TO TOWN, which director John Schultz (LIKE MIKE) adapted from Kimberly Willis Holt's novel, starring Jonathan Lipnicki and Eric Stoltz; and Dave Silver's CORN, starring Jena Malone.

* Production Partners Inc. and Frank Darabont's Darkwoods Prods. will develop and produce a feature adaptation of Margaret Leslie Davis' RIVERS IN THE DESERT: WILLIAM MULHOLLAND AND THE INVENTING OF LOS ANGELES. The book chronicles the true story of Mulholland, considered a visionary who was vital in building modern Los Angeles, from his triumphant rise to his tragic fall. He designed the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemisphere to bring in water from the mountains, transforming Los Angeles from a desert to an inhabitable environment. Mulholland saw his wealth and fame taken away when a dam he constructed collapsed and killed more than 500 people.

* Warner Bros. has optioned the feature rights to MY LOSING SEASON, Pat Conroy's memoir of his final season as point guard for the Citadel basketball team in 1966-67. Brad Pitt and his manager Brad Grey will produce with Gaylord Entertainment. The book chronicles Conroy's senior season as an overachieving point guard and team captain at the military school. It's the coming-of-age story of a youth who prepares to give up the game that gave him a feeling of self worth and a refuge from a bullying fighter pilot father. Conroy's dad inspired THE GREAT SANTINI.

* Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies have optioned the soon-to-be published mystery series ARTHUR SPIDERWICK'S GUIDE TO THE FANTASTIC WORLD AROUND YOU. The six -book series, to be written by fantasy writer Holly Black and writer-illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, focuses on a set of boy twins and their older teenaged sister who find an alternate world of fairies and goblins in their great-uncle's rundown house.

* New Line Cinema is teaming with DC Comics to create a feature based on the classic comic book SHAZAM!, which centered on mild-mannered Billy Batson who discovers that he can call on the powers of an ancient Egyptian wizard, Shazam, and thereafter undertakes heroic exploits.

* Fox 2000 has purchased the feature rights to the IN DEATH book series from author Nora Roberts (under the pen name J.D. Robb) for Icon Prods. to produce along with Susan Landau. The romance thriller series, which contains 14 titles, follows the life and investigations of New York police Lt. Eve Dallas.

* Tom Hanks and Imax will mount MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION, a 3-D documentary that aspires to give moviegoers the feeling of what it was like to visit the moon. Playtone Prods. will produce, and Hanks will narrate. The feature will use NASA (news - web sites) footage of the 12 men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972, still photographs, voiceover footage and commentary. It will be co-directed by Mark Herzog and Mark Cowen (WE STAND ALONE TOGETHER: THE MEN OF EASY COMPANY.

GUNN SHOTS

(NOT from the trades)

* GALFO FILMS and CINEGROUPE, a Canadian entertainment company, have joined their efforts to bring an animation series, a live TV series and a major motion picture based on the adventures from the best-selling European comic strip: Dr Justice/Docteur Justice.

* The independent hit movie NEW WORLD has made a deal with Dream Media Entertainment to re-shoot the Science Fiction movie as a 35mm Feature Film in Central Ohio. Columbus resident Peter John Ross will write and direct the remake based on his original story, Dream Media's Greg Fish and Dustin Davis will produce.

* Travesty Productions is proud to announce that DEADEND.COM has been invited to Sundance. Visit By Clicking Here for more.

* There's a new Star Trek Fan Film at: This Spot

* I was sent a rumor that the producers for the next JAMES BOND pic are considering Tsui Hark as a possible director.

Until next week.

Elston Gunn

elstongunn@hotmail.com