A few weeks before Christmas, one of Hollywood’s more venerable institutions, The Friars Club, held a traditional ‘Roast’ for Muhammad Ali. Friars Roasts are a sort of ‘gentlemen’s club’ affair in which the young-at-heart-but-not-so-young-in-body tell jokes, usually blue-tinged, about the featured celebrity - affectionately, of course, albeit with a slight edge.

The Ali Roast was apparently something of an exception, since it was almost entirely made up of good-natured compliments. Either no one dared mock the former Heavyweight Champion of the World, or (more likely) no one thought it was appropriate.

Meanwhile, in another part of (this) town, accountants, artists and egos were clashing over something very similar: Sony’s long-planned Ali biopic. The thing has already gone quite a few rounds, looks like it could yet go the distance, but might just end up in the champion’s corner.

Will Smith has been in line to play the title role from the very start. But when the project was first mooted, it was going to be a Tony Scott movie: now it’s a Michael Mann film. That’s quite a difference. Mann has never been a director to be content with ‘just’ telling the story - as witness his most recent flick, The Insider. So the change of helm suggests that the Ali biopic would become an epic saga of 20th-century America, rather than just the life of a boxer with some good fight scenes in it - more Malcolm X than Somebody Up There Likes Me, in other words.

The problem was cost. You may think $105 million would about do it (it would, after all, do most things). But then you have to factor in Smith’s share of the purse (a reported 20% of the gross in addition to an upfront fee of $20 million). So, earlier in the year, with Mann refusing to trim and Sony refusing to pony up more, the whole thing looked like it was on the ropes. Then both sides did some nifty last-minute footwork and, by late October, all of a sudden there was a deal.

Mann and his producer, Jon Peters, would put up guarantees against any cost overruns; foreign partner Initial Entertainment Group - which has also part-funded such big-budget, name-director projects as Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic - would put up a big chunk of the money. But exactly how much they would put up continued to be discussed right down to the final signing. After all, while IEG has only got one Will Smith movie on which to recoup, Sony has two: by the time the actor dons his boxing gloves, he will already have completed Men in Black 2. And that, I’m sure we’ll all agree, is a somewhat less risky proposition.

Finally, in early November, additional cast members began to come aboard. Mario Van Peebles was cast as Malcolm X, who became the fighter’s spiritual adviser and supervised his conversion to Islam (which is when he changed his name from Cassius Clay). A little later, Van Peebles was joined by Jamie Foxx and Jeffrey Wright. But no start date has yet been set: I’ll be sure to tell you when it is.

Smith has, however, dropped out of Jonathan Demme’s remake of Stanley Donen’s Charade. You may remember we mentioned that project on these pages exactly a year ago. But, hey, this is Hollywood, where a year in development is as insignificant as a booking in a restaurant if someone more important shows up. And anyway, things are definitely progressing: the film now has (1) a title: The Truth About Charlie; (2) a start date: “this spring” (is that specific enough for you?); and (3) a couple of new cast members.

The original version had Audrey Hepburn as a woman whose husband is murdered in Paris. She finds herself being chased by four sinister individuals (James Coburn in a corduroy suit was the most memorable of the original bunch) until she is rescued by a charming stranger (Cary Grant - who else?).

The Hepburn part now looks like being played by Thandie Newton, with Mark Wahlberg in the Grant role. Production could start as soon as Wahlberg (like half of Hollywood) finishes work on Tim Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes.