ON THE ROAD AGAIN

REGULAR READERS OF these pages will know that I have something of an obsession with the 1986 movie The Hitcher, in which a vengeful (and possibly supernatural) Rutger Hauer pursues the unfortunate C Thomas Howell across the desert, doing something especially nasty to Jennifer Jason-Leigh in the process.

Over the (almost) 10 years I’ve been writing ‘Hollywood Notes’, the only echoes of that film seem to have been projects involving its writer, Eric Red, which may or may not have been made (they were scheduled, if I remember correctly, to be shot in Lithuania, of all places, which suggest that they may not have been top-budget flicks). As for The Hitcher, there was talk of a sequel at the end of the last millennium (December 1999, to be precise), but nothing seems to have come of it. Since 1986, moreover, the original film’s director, Robert Harmon, has worked mainly in television.

Recently, however, he returned to the big screen with a horror movie called They, which is due to be released some time this year by Dimension Films. And he is sticking with the broader canvas for his next film, which sounds suspiciously like a return to the world of The Hitcher. It is called Highwaymen, and is about good guys and bad guys driving classic American cars. Avi Lerner’s Millennium Films is due to shoot the film some time this spring. Be sure I will keep you posted, whether you care or not.

JACK AND THE LAD

SO ALL RIGHT, Robert De Niro isn’t the only one: lots of serious actors do comedies (and Tom Hanks sometimes does bad-guy roles). But did you ever expect to see Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler above the same title?

There is, of course, the distinct possibility that, if you’re not an American moviegoer, you may even go “Adam who?”, since none of the comedy star’s major US box-office hits has really scored worldwide (and his most recent, big-budget effort, Little Nicky, didn’t do a lot better on its home turf).

Then again, I guess there must be quite a few of Sandler’s core US audience who, if they don’t exactly go “Jack who?”, are more likely to think of Nicholson as a celebrity-page regular than as a major movie star. Of late - apart from The Pledge, whose demographics were distinctly on the grey side - the big guy has confined himself to cameo roles (Mars Attacks!).

But enough speculation and analysis: what I’m trying to get round to saying is that Joe Roth of Revolution Studios has signed Nicholson and Sandler to co-star in the comedy Anger Management, which is set to start shooting in March (around the time Nicholson’s next movie, About Schmidt, opens stateside).

Sandler will play a mild- mannered businessman who somehow ends up on an anger-management programme (that’s one of those American things where the inner you gets taken for a walk and returned in a more user-friendly form). Problem for Sandler’s character is that the guy who runs the course is an ultra-aggressive control freak. Guess who plays that role?

HAVING STEERED A very personal career course more or less ever since she turned her back on Wednesday Addams and began to embrace roles with a, you know, sexual content, Christina Ricci has now notched things up a gear and decided it’s time to direct her first film. This will be a movie called Speed Queen, which is described as a ‘dark comedy’ in which Ricci will also apparently star. Production is due to start in the first half of this year.

Meanwhile, there is still quite a bunch of Ricci flicks awaiting release. There’s the screen adaptation of the Me-Generation bestseller Prozac Nation, which is due out from Miramax on May 10. There is the dark satire Pumpkin, which Ricci also produced, about a rich Californian sorority girl who agrees to sponsor an Olympic athlete, only to find out that it’s the para-Olympics and the athlete in question is mentally handicapped.

And finally, there are the two films Ricci made in the UK last year: Miranda, directed by Marc Munden, about a manipulative woman who uses her charms to get what she wants (without ever being quite sure what that is); and the Gothic horror movie, The Gathering, which we featured in our last issue.

Speed Queen, by the way, is being produced by Monsoon Entertainment, the company set up by Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón and former Canal Plus executive Arnaud Duteuil.