Father Geek here with ol' Elston Gunn bringing you our latest edition of our long running thumbnail news column...

THE WEEKLY RECAP...

TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

CASTING

* Cher will star opposite Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon in 20th Century Fox's STUCK ON YOU for Bobby and Peter Farrelly. The project begins shooting this month in Miami. It's about conjoined twins, one of whom aspires to act. They are cast on a television show starring Cher, who isn't too happy to be working on TV. But the show becomes a huge hit, catapulting the twins to stardom.

* Ben Kingsley joins Bill Paxton in Working Title Films' big-screen adaptation of THUNDERBIRDS. Kingsley will play the villain.

* Kevin Kline will play composer and songwriter Cole Porter in the biopic DE-LOVELY for Irwin Winkler and United Artists. Shooting begins May 5 in London. The project will focus on how a gay man found his musical inspiration from the woman he married. Jay Cocks (GANGS OF NEW YORK) wrote the script, and the film will feature interludes from songs from Porter's most famous musicals, including ANYTHING GOES and KISS ME KATE.

* Master P and Lil' Romeo will star in the urban family comedy UNCLE P for director Bernard Gourly. Production is scheduled to begin later this month. Written by Dallas Jackson, UNCLE P is about a multimillion-dollar businessman in New York known as P Miller, who is also a world-famous rapper. When Miller's sister, a single mother living in suburban California, becomes ill, she asks her brother to come and take care of her three children.

* Anne Heche is in talks to join Nicole Kidman, Danny Huston and Lauren Bacall in Fine Line Features' dramatic mystery BIRTH for director Jonathan Glazer.

* Russell Crowe will reunite with director Ron Howard for the period boxing drama CINDERELLA MAN for Universal/Miramax. The project follows Depression-era fighter and folk hero Jim Braddock, who defeated heavyweight champ Max Baer in a 15-round slugfest in 1935. Production is set to begin mid-November. Akiva Goldsman will come aboard for a rewrite on a script by Cliff Hollingsworth and Charlie Mitchell.

* Eddie Griffin is set to star in YES I CAN, a feature about singer and Rat Pack member Sammy Davis Jr., for producer David Permut.

* Malcolm McDowell, Howie Mandel and Whoopi Goldberg have been added to the vocal cast of CineGroupe's P3K, PINOCCHIO 3000 -- Canada's first full-length 3-D animated feature.

* Wes Bentley is in discussions to star in Crusader Entertainment's soccer-themed feature THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES for director David Anspaugh and writer Angelo Pizzo (both of HOOSIERS and RUDY).

* Nicole Kidman has been offered the title role in Warner Bros. Pictures' CATWOMAN, though she is waiting on the latest draft of the script before making any decisions.

* Marisa Coughlan (PUMPKIN, SUPER TROOPERS) joins Adam Goldberg's psychological drama I LOVE YOUR WORK. Christina Ricci, Giovanni Ribisi, Franka Potente, Vince Vaughn, Joshua Jackson and Jason Lee also star.

* Wesley Snipes will star in and David Carson will direct the action-thriller NINE LIVES for Millennium Films and the Jacobson Co. Shooting begins shooting March 30 in Bulgaria. It's about a former Army Special Ops soldier who, mistaken for a government agent, gets injected with a hallucinogenic mind-control drug that allows people to alter his reality with simple suggestions. Tom Vaughan wrote the script.

* Toni Collette is in talks to star opposite Nia Vardalos in CONNIE AND CARLA for Spyglass Entertainment and director Michael Lembeck. Production begins in early May. The story centers on two working-class dinner-theater singers who are forced to go undercover in Los Angeles as drag queens.

* Judy Greer (ADAPTATION) has grabbed roles in Dimension Films' werewolf pic CURSED for director Wes Craven, as well as Disney's PROVIDENCE for director Jeff Nathanson. The actress will shoot both projects simultaneously beginning next month.

* Angelina Jolie will play an accomplished aviatrix in the sci fi thriller THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, also starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, for writer/director Kerry Conran. The pre-WWII adventure tale stars Jolie as a pilot matched with a swashbuckling colleague and a probing journalist. Giovanni Ribisi and Bai Ling are also in talks to join the film. Production begins in March in London.

DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS

* New Line grabbed the April Blair-penned script DOUBLE OR NOTHING as a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez to produce through her Nuyorican Prods. It follows the story of what happens when a male police officer is killed on stakeout after he illegally boards a boat he is watching. In order to solve the crime, the two female cops he was dating are forced to band together to find the killer and discover which one he truly loves.

* Disney is near a deal with writer/director Randall Wallace for his historical epic LOVE AND HONOR, which will begin filming in the fall for a Christmas 2004 relesase while Hyperion will publish Wallace's novel of the story around Christmas this year. It's an 18th century story framed around the Revolutionary War that will be set mostly in Russia.

* Entitled Entertainment has snapped up the screenplay AURORA BOREALIS by Brent Boyd for James Burke to direct. It centers on a troubled young man struggling to right himself after the premature death of his father. The company also has optioned the rights to the Peter Gethers novel GETTING BLUE about a young star athlete's search for truth, love and the ultimate baseball moment.

* Spice Factory has optioned the script THE FORGOTTEN GAMES, penned by David Ondaatje, based on the true story of the British Olympic ice hockey team's controversial participation in the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany. Ondaatje will also direct. Production will begin in Canada, England and Germany late this year.

* Furst Films has picked up the comedy script SLUTS, written by Pamela Buchignani, with Rob Schmidt attached to direct. It centers on a fast-living high school rock 'n' roll groupie who gets thrown into Catholic school. While there, she must find out how to maintain her hard-core lifestyle or risk rediscovering her innocence.

* Fox 2000 Pictures has optioned Yann Martel's novel LIFE OF PI for writer Dean Georgaris to adapt. The absurdist, yet philosophical, story, follows a 16-year-old Indian boy whose passage to a new life in America aboard a freighter ends in shipwreck in the Pacific. Left to fend for himself on a 26-foot life raft with a hyena, an orangutan, an injured zebra and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, Pi survives for the better part of a year through faith and guile, though Richard eventually kills off and dines on the rest of Pi's shipmates.

* Director-actor Mathieu Kassovitz will direct Dark Castle Entertainment's supernatural thriller GOTHIKA, starring Halle Berry and Penelope Cruz. Production begins in April for an October release. Sebastian Gutierrez wrote the script about a criminal psychologist who awakens to find herself a patient in her own mental institution with no memory of the murder she has apparently committed.

* Nina Colman has sold the scripts I'LL BE YOU, a romantic comedy, and college-set thriller BREAKING THE GIRL to Myriad Pictures for Karen Roberts to produce.

* Vanguard Films has just sold a pitch to Disney based on the Roald Dahl classic children's book THE TWITS. The script will be written by John Cleese (FIERCE CREATURES) and Kirk De Micco (QUEST FOR CAMELOT). The story centers on Mr. and Mrs. Twit, the two nastiest people in the world, who play mean practical jokes on each other and mastermind elaborate heists along with their crew of trained animals. One day, however, the animals turn the tables on the Twits, framing them for what was to have been their ultimate heist and living out their days in South America.

* Atom Egoyan bought the screen rights to Rupert Holmes' upcoming novel WHERE THE TRUTH LIES. Egoyan will write the script with an eye toward making the project his next directorial effort. Holmes, best known for his song "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)," used his experience writing songs for Barbra Streisand on A STAR IS BORN as the inspiration for a mystery, with elements of romance and comedy, about a female journalist who becomes romantically involved with both members of an estranged comedy team. One of whom might be a murderer.

* Nicole Kassell will direct THE WOODSMAN, an indie drama about pedophilia, for Lee Daniels Entertainment.

* Lisa Schrager (PAY THE GIRL) has sold the pitch BRAND NEW FAMILY to Columbia Pictures with Joel Gallen attached to direct. It's described as a female-driven comedy set in New Jersey.

* Brent Hanley (FRAILTY) will rewrite Sam Egan's script THE VOLUNTEER with Nicolas Cage starring and producing via his Saturn Films at New Line. It's about a man who discovers that Earth's population is actually completely full with aliens who have taken shelter here after their home planet was destroyed.

* New Line Cinema picked up Anya Kochoff's comedy script MONSTER-IN-LAW about an unlucky-in-love girl who's set to marry what appears to be the perfect guy until she meets his mother, who has plans to derail their courtship and earn the title of the world's worst mother-in-law.

* Paramount grabbed the sports-themed pitch STARTING FIVE for Lorenzo di Bonaventura to produce. The plot centers on an NBA all-star who falls from grace and winds up in prison. Once there, he tries to redeem himself by putting together a group of inmates to play his former NBA team. Ian Corson and Mark Bacci are scripting.

* Gregory Jacobs will direct a remake of the Argentine thriller NINE QUEENS for producers Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney. The project follows a day in the life of two con artists who team on a scam involving a forged set of extremely valuable stamps, the Nine Queens. Jacobs will also co-write the script with Soderbergh.

* Director Roland Joffe (THE KILLING FIELDS) will make THE INVADERS, a $40 million epic on the first Anglo-Indian war. Vivek Oberoi will star. The film will revolve around the first battle between English troops and the Maratha dynasty at Wadgaon in western India in the late 18th century.

* Steven Spielberg is in final negotiations to direct Tom Hanks in DreamWorks' airport comedy TERMINAL, about an Eastern European immigrant who becomes a resident of a New York airport terminal when a war breaks out and erases his country from the map, voiding his passport. He makes friends with the airport staff and falls in love with a flight attendant. Jeff Nathanson (PROVIDENCE, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN) and Sacha Gervasi (SIMONE) wrote the script, which Hanks helped develop into a starring vehicle. Shooting may begin toward the end of the year.

* Fine Line Features has optioned Andrea Berloff's script HARRY & CARESSE, inspired by historical figures Harry and Caresse Crosby, who influenced the Paris literary scene of the 1920s. The project follows the couple's relationship through drugs, sex and endless parties all in the name of creating art.

* George Hickenlooper (THE MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELDS) will direct the thriller DIARY Escape Artists. Eric Nichols wrote the script about a woman with the perfect marriage and a dark secret. When her diary falls into the wrong hands, her life spirals out of control as she goes to ever-greater lengths to contain the scandal that threatens her family.

MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS

* Warner Bros. Pictures has purchased the remake rights to Hong Kong crime drama INTERNAL AFFAIRS from Media Asia for Brad Pitt and Brad Grey to produce. It's the cat-and-mouse story of a Mafia informant within a police organization and an undercover cop in the Triads. The moles find out that there is another mole in their respective camps and are determined to find out who it is.

* Paramount will develop HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL a feature film based on the long-running television series, with Daniel Pyne set to write the script.

* Producer John Wells has signed an exclusive production and development deal with Warner Bros. Pictures. Features in development that are most likely to go next include Carroll Ballard's HOW IT WAS WITH DOOMS; the remake of Katja Von Garner's BANDITS; an adaptation of THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK; and RAVELING, which will star Julianne Moore.

* New Line Cinema has fast-tracked a hip-hop-flavored remake of the cult classic 1973 reggae crime drama THE HARDER THEY COME.

* Former U.S. West Multimedia CEO Robert Hawk and former RKO Pictures senior consultant Quay Hays have formed Idiom Films, an independent production and finance company. The first project to go will be the comedy HATING HER, written and to be directed by Thomas Bezucha (BIG EDEN), starring Selma Blair, Billy Crudup, Blythe Danner, Logan Marshall-Green, Bridget Moynahan, Donald Sutherland and Maura Tierney. Shooting is scheduled to begin March 24. After that, in May, will be the romantic drama THE LAST FACE, written and to be directed by Erin Dignam and starring Robin Wright Penn and Javier Bardem.

* Paramount Pictures has bought rights to Joseph Finder's novel PARANOIA about a lazy but bright young exec fingered for corporate malfeasance and ordered to infiltrate a high-tech rival. As the exec becomes a rising star at his new employer, he seeks to break the bonds with his former company.