Last issue, we noted that Will Smith - star of this summer’s Fourth of July movie, Wild Wild West - was in line for the Judy Garland role in a remake of A Star Is Born. Now what do we hear but that he is planning to marry Nic Cage? On screen, of course. But is the Fresh Prince that sure of his gender identity?

The nuptials - if they do indeed take place - will happen in I Now Pronounce You Joe and Benny, director Tom Shadyac’s first film since Patch Adams. Not that either Cage or Smith will be playing gay. Really what they will be doing is playing at being gay: Joe and Benny is about two butch firefighters who tie the knot for insurance purposes.

If all the contract points can be sorted out, Cage will play a widower who saves the life of fellow fireman Smith. The latter says he will do anything for his friend, and Cage’s character suggests marrying him, since without a partner he cannot get the right kind of insurance to ensure his children’s future if he really does get killed on the job. Inevitably, the press pick up on the story. But one of the less obvious side-effects is that Cage and Smith do end up forming a family unit for the former’s kids.

If he takes the part, Cage - who is currently being talked of for the title role in Notting Hill director Roger Mitchell’s screen version of cult bestseller Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (but will be on screens long before that in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead) - will make Joe and Benny after Disney’s big action movie, Gone in 60 Seconds, which is currently shooting in the US.

That film, incidentally, marks the Hollywood debut of Wimbledon bad boy Vinnie Jones, the hard man of British football, who made an impressive debut in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. And he’s not just doing a walk-on in 60 Seconds, either: sources talk of a major featured role.

Smith’s Wild Wild West co-star, meanwhile, Mexican actress Salma Hayek, is the latest to jump onto the Frida Kahlo bandwagon. A biopic of the Mexican artist - who makes a fleeting appearance (played by Corinna Katt) in Tim Robbins’ acclaimed Cannes entry, Cradle Will Rock - was for a couple of years one of Madonna’s movie projects. But Hayek’s production outfit, Ventanarosa Productions, has now landed the rights and expects to get the movie underway later this year, with Hayek both producing and starring.

Finally, to complete all the footnotes about what people professionally connected with Will Smith and Nic Cage may also be doing, Martin Scorsese is reported to be in talks with Vinnie Jones to play the title role in his biopic about Bettie Page, the pin-up girl who caused a stir in the fifties by posing nude and/or in bondage gear. For readers too young to remember the fifties, it was not a liberal era and Page’s career soon sputtered.

Which is certainly not something one would think of saying of Tyler’s, even if her screen stock-in-trade to date has tended towards the demure. Looks like that rock ‘n’ roll parentage is finally starting to show, however.