Father Geek here with Elston's latest look at the week that was out in Hollywoodland. As is the usual in this regular AICN column he covers all that daily movie news that you might find important that just may have slipped by you during your past hectic work-week. Soooooo grap a big mug of your fave beverage, sit back, and enjoy a trip thru Tinseltown's most recent past in the...

WEEKLY RECAP...

TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

CASTING

* Alison Pill will play the female lead in Thomas Vinterberg's DEAR WENDY, starring Jamie Bell. Set in a small mining town in West Virginia, the story centers on an ingenious teenager who finds a friend and confidant in a pistol after losing his father.

* Franka Potente and Sean Harris will star in CREEP, a British horror pic set underneath London's streets, for writer/director Chris Smith. It's about a girl trapped after hours in the Tube. Menaced by an unknown assailant, she stumbles in the secret world of tunnels that lies beneath the city.

* Eion Bailey will star in the dark comedy GLORY DAYS for writer/director Barra Grant about a group of friends who devise an intervention for their hard-drinking friend, but plans go awry when the appointed shrink fails to show up.

* Karl Urban (THE TWO TOWERS) is in talks to play Matt Damon's nemesis in Universal Pictures' THE BOURNE SUPREMACY for director Paul Greengrass.

* Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are in talks to star in the New Line Cinema comedy THE WEDDING CRASHERS about two guys who have a hobby of crashing weddings in order to meet girls. While crashing a random nuptial, one of them unexpectedly falls in love. Steve Faber and Bob Fisher wrote the script, with Tapestry Films' Andrew Panay and Peter Abrams on board to produce.

* Jeremy Renner (S.W.A.T.) will star in LOVE COMES TO THE EXECUTIONER for writer/director Kyle Bergersen and Aura Entertainment. It's about a recent college graduate who becomes the star executioner at the local prison where his brother is slated to die. The executioner's morality collides with his genetic destiny on death row when he finds an unconventional true love in his brother's incarcerated ex-girlfriend.

* Matthew McConaughey will star in the comedy ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, written by Johnny Rosenthal, for New Line Cinema and j.k. livin Prods. It's about an over-the-hill narcotics officer who faces life outside the high school corridors when he hits the department's mandatory retirement age of 30.

* Reese Witherspoon's Type A Films is developing a remake of Otto Preminger's 1965 pic BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, with Witherspoon attached to star. The original told the story of a young girl, Bunny, reported missing by her mother. When the police find no trace that Bunny ever existed, the mother's sanity is questioned.

* Sylvia Chang (EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN) will star TV chef Martin Yan in HAINAN CHICKEN RICE, a first-time feature written/directed by Kenneth Bi. The story revolves around a conservative single mother and restaurant owner who raises her three sons using her mother's secret Hainan chicken rice recipe. Concerned that her youngest son might be gay, Chang takes in a French female exchange student, who teaches the family important lessons in life.

* Brooke Burke has landed a cameo role in 20th Century Fox and Red Hour Films' UNTITLED DODGEBALL MOVIE, starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, for writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber.

* Sean Bean (FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING) joins the Disney pic NATIONAL TREASURE for director/producer Jon Turteltaub and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

* Paul Adelstein (INTOLERABLE CRUELTY) has joined the cast of COLLATERAL for director Michael Mann and DreamWorks/Paramount.

* Ashley Scott joins Paul Walker and Jessica Alba in MGM's INTO THE BLUE for director John Stockwell. Shooting starts in mid-January.

* Kathleen Robertson is set to star in the independent feature MALL COP for director David Greenspan. It's about a security guard at a mall who befriends her predecessor when he returns to the scene after being fired for a burglary that occurred on his watch. Selena Chang and Matthew Reynolds wrote the script.

* Miguel Ferrer joins the cast of Paramount's remake of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber.

* Paul Walker, Susan Sarandon and Penelope Cruz will star in NOEL, a holiday-themed indie drama, for director Chazz Palminteri and Neverland Films. Shooting begins next month. David Hubbard wrote the script about the intertwining lives of several jaded Manhattanites moved by the magic of the holiday season to rise above the problems they face.

* John Leguizamo, Ana Claudia Talancon, Elizabeth Pena and Tiffany Limos will star in the indie dramedy SUENO for director Renee Chabria and El Camino Pictures. It's about a Mexican immigrant who is struggling to survive in L.A. and, in doing so, enters a local Latino singing competition. Meanwhile, he finds himself in a romantic triangle with two women -- a neighbor in her 40s and a young veterinary student.

* Emma Thompson has joined the ensemble cast of Warner Bros.' HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN for director Alfonso Cuaron. Thompson will play the ethereal and eccentric Professor of Divination Sybill Trelawney, known at Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft & Wizardry for her somewhat questionable predictions.

* Pierce Brosnan will star in MEXICALI, an action thriller that will mark the directorial debut of film editor Pietro Scalia (JFK, BLACK HAWK DOWN), for MGM, Mostow/Lieberman, Newman/Tooley and Irish Dreamtime. Christian Gudegast and Paul Scheuring (A MAN APART) wrote the script with Patrick Kelly (MAN ON THE LEDGE) set for a rewrite. Brosnan will play a successful businessman who witnesses a murder while on a sailboat with his wife off the coast of Baja. After she goes missing, he must save her and make his way back across the border before the killers catch up with him.

* Will Ferrell is attached to star in THE SALESMAN, a pitch by Dana Gould ("The Simpsons") set up at New Line for Landscape Entertainment. It's about a salesman whose compulsive lying leaves him living with his parents and engaged to two women because he can't bear to disappoint either one. As the lies catch up to him, the salesman meets a no-nonsense girl who gets him to change his ways.

* James Purefoy, Frances O'Connor and Lesley Manville are set to star in POETIC UNREASON, about British war poet Robert Graves, for writer/director William Nunez. Production begins in the spring in London and Majorca.

* Dakota Fanning will star in HIDE AND SEEK for director John Polson at 20th Century Fox. She will play the daughter of Robert De Niro's character who is torn up over the suicide of her mother. She begins to deal with her mom's death through an imaginary friend, which winds up taking an unexpected and terrifying turn. Ari Schlossberg scripted.

DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS

* English writer Glenn Wilhide is adapting Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino for German producer Thomas Chuhly. Set in the 12th century, the story explores the intriguing relationship between the Oriental world under the sultan Saladin and the popes, politicians and monarchs of the Christian world. The pic is expected to begin production in 2005.

* John Aboud and Michael Colton (Modern Humorist founders) will write the sports movie spoof THE COMEBACKS for Fox Searchlight. The duo is also finishing a rewrite of the teen gladiator comedy GEN CCX for Fox and producer Neal Moritz.

* Hannah Rothschild, co-founder of the Artists on Film Trust, will write and direct GENE MACHINE for Scott Free Prods. The pic is a high-concept comedy about a man whose student career as a prolific sperm donor comes back to haunt him 20 years later.

* Mike Lisbe and Nate Reger sold their comedy pitch LITTLE ORPHAN ANTHONY, starring Anthony Anderson, to New Line Cinema for Anderson to also produce. It centers on a young yuppie couple whose lives are turned upside down when they mistakenly adopt the world's oldest orphan -- a 25-year-old man.

* Helmut Dietl will direct VOM SUCHEN UND FINDEN DER LIEBE (ABOUT SEARCHING AND FINDING LOVE), based on a screenplay he co-wrote with Patrick Suskind.

* Disney picked up Pierce Gardner's spec script DAN IN REAL LIFE, a romantic comedy in a family setting.

* Patricia Cardoso (REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES) is set to direct Universal's NAPPILY EVER AFTER, the Halle Berry starrer that the actress is producing along with Marc Platt Prods. The dramedy, based on Trisha Thomas' novel, follows a black woman's journey to self-discovery. On an impulse, the main character, an advertising exec tired of fussing with her long and processed straight hair, shaves it off and kicks out her commitment-phobic boyfriend. Discovering a newfound freedom, she is unprepared for how friends and co-workers react to her new hairdo and subsequent new life. Tina Chism penned the adaptation.

* Victor Fresco comedy spec MY BAD SELF is set up at Columbia Pictures with Pariah producing. It's the story of a mild-mannered young man confronted by an alter ego who seems to personify all of the urges that he's afraid to experience.

* GreeneStreet Films and Killer Films will produce a feature based on author James McManus' nonfiction bestseller POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET, which John Ridley will adapt and direct. The book is a suspenseful account of how the author's fascination with poker and its players drew him into the seedy underworld surrounding America's favorite card game.

* M. Night Shyamalan is in talks with Fox 2000 about adapting, directing and producing LIFE OF PI, based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel. The book is a magical adventure story centering on Pi Patel, the precocious son of a zookeeper. Residents of Pondicherry, India -- Shyamalan's home town -- the family decides to move to Canada, hitching a ride on a freighter. After a shipwreck, Pi is found adrift in the Pacific on a 26-foot lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.

* Dark Castle Entertainment has tapped Danny Kuchuck and John Weiner to script a redo of the William Castle horror film I SAW WHAT YOU DID. The original film told the story of two teenagers who make a series of prank phone calls to strangers, whispering 'I saw what you did, and I know who you are.' In the film, the fun stops when they randomly ring a man who has just murdered his wife.

* Craig Moss and Steven Schoenburg have sold their comedy spec NIGHT GIRLS to New Regency. It's being described as RISKY BUSINESS meets PARENTHOOD.

* Catherine Hardwicke (THIRTEEN) is in negotiations to rewrite and direct the Columbia Pictures skater drama LORDS OF DOGTOWN. Written by Stacy Peralta (DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS), the project follows a group of young California surfers who take their style to the streets as skateboarders, thereby launching a whole new sport that defined a generation.

* Adam Shankman is attached to direct FOUR CHRISTMASES for Spyglass Entertainment and Columbia Pictures. Howard Gould has been hired to rewrite the script, originally penned by Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson. It tells the story of a young couple, each of whose parents have divorced and married other people. This leaves the newlyweds with four parental households to visit over the course of Christmas Day.

MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS

* Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai (CHUNGKING EXPRESS) and his Block 2 Films will develop a minimum of three English-language films for Fox Searchlight Pictures. While the films are expected to take place in Asian settings, they may well include Western actors in their casts.

* French producer Georges Campana is setting up his own company, Breakout Films, and has put together an initial slate of English-language movies. Their first project is the family movie TWO BROTHERS RUNNING, directed by Mario Andreacchio, and is scheduled to start shooting in South Africa at month's end. It's a road movie centered on two baby elephants who have to make a journey through Africa.

* Warner Bros. is optioning the screen rights to the Ron McLarty novel THE MEMORY OF RUNNING. McLarty will pen the screenplay about a 43-year-old, 279-pound assembly line supervisor who grieves the car crash death of his parents by getting on a Raleigh bicycle in his funeral suit and pedaling cross-country.

* Animation studio Ludewig is developing an animated pic featuring the kiddie book characters parodied in the 2001 pic MANITOU'S SHOE.

* Amitabh Bachchan is relaunching his entertainment company Amitabh Bachchan Corp. and has announced its first project, an unnamed Hindi-lingo pic in collaboration with DMS films. Raj Kumar Santoshi will direct.

* Edward Norton and Stuart Blumberg have launched production company Class V and inked a three-year, first-look pact with Universal Pictures. The duo are producing an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's novel MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN for New Line. Norton is set to star in the detective story. Class V is likely to look to adapt other books as well as plays.

GUNN SHOTS

(NOT from the trades)

* The project DANGER RANGER!: RAGE OF THE COMMIEBOTS is getting some coverage at http://www.filmthreat.com/News.asp?Id=1450 Find out more about the internet serial at http://www.godangerranger.com

* Enzian Theater announces the lineup of the 2003 Central Florida Jewish Film Festival. This year's Festival takes place Sunday and Monday, October 26-27, 2003 in Orlando, Florida. For more information, visit http://www.enzian.org

* The first annual Boston Fantastic Film Festival is pleased to announce the final confirmed line-up for this year's inaugural session which runs from October 17 - 23, 2003. For details, go to http://www.brattlefilm.org/bfff

* MALEVOLENCE won the 2003 award for Best 35mm Feature at the Long Island Film Festival. The pic will be screened back to back at the ScreamfestLA film festival at 2 p.m. on October 13, 2003 and at the New York Horror Film Festival at 3 p.m. on October 25, 2003. Visit http://www.malevolencemovie.com for more

* Bloodshot Pictures' pic, ?, is in development, assembling a team of notable cult film and art icons for a post-modern film based on the last days of the Black Dahlia. Check out http://www.bloodshotpictures.com for more.