TODAY EGYPT, TOMORROW THE WORLD

The movie version of the much-loved comic strip Dudley Do-Right opens in the US sometime in August. If it’s a hit, Brendan Fraser will have enjoyed the rare distinction of being the star of two big movies in a single summer (the other, of course, being our May/June cover story The Mummy).

But Mummy director Stephen Sommers isn’t waiting to see what lies in store for the dim-witted Mountie at the box office: he is already well-advanced in talks with Warner Bros to use Fraser in the lead role of Phineas Fogg - last taken by David Niven in 1956 - in a planned remake of Around the World in 80 Days.

Warners expect to start shooting the movie early next year, presumably with a Christmas 2000 release in mind.

BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR

In Cannes with Preview’s last issue, I met up with Grace Qek who, under her nom d’écran of Annabel Chong, was (and, since she recently unretired, still is) a major player in the Californian porn business. Grace (rather than Annabel) was in Cannes, meanwhile, to promote the documentary about her life, Sex: The Annabel Chong Story.

I mention this only because reports of a new movie recalled what Grace had to say about the mainstream media’s interest in the world of ‘adult’ movies. It could, she said, be broken down into two categories. First, there were the feminist documentaries designed to show that all sex workers were exploited slaves (something which Grace emphatically denies). Second, there were the documentaries the networks put out during sweeps (ratings) weeks, which purported to be serious studies, but instead used the occasion to get as pruriently close to the line of what can be shown on broadcast TV as they possibly could.

I am sure Rated X will do no such thing, although the movie, which is being made for Showtime in the US but may get theatrical release elsewhere, sort of fits the bill. It is a biopic about Artie and Jim Mitchell, the legendary San Francisco kings of the adult movie business in the porno-chic heyday of the seventies, whose partnership came to a sudden end in 1991 when Jim shot Artie during a family row and was jailed for three years for voluntary manslaughter.

The Mitchells made one of the genre’s most enduring classics: Behind the Green Door, which introduced Marilyn Chambers to habitués of the Pussycat and other similar US theatre chains - or at any rate to those habitués who were not familiar with Ivory Snow soap, which Ms Chambers also promoted.

The Mitchell brothers are played by the Sheen brothers, aka Charlie (or Charles, as he prefers to be called these days) and Emilio Estevez. Also going behind the door will be Nicole DeBoer of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame.

Satisfying our prurience in a rather less extreme fashion, meanwhile, will be a future biopic about Playboy founder and non-stop party animal Hugh Hefner. El Hef-e is long known to have been deeply miffed that, when Hollywood did deign to recognise the world of glamour mags, it chose to focus on Larry Flynt instead of him.

The Hefner movie will be produced at Universal by the Imagine Entertainment team of Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, but there is no word yet on who will play the man himself.