THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

In addition to items about remakes of classic movies (otherwise known as Films I Especially Like), one of the staples of this column is an item called ‘What Paul Verhoeven Is Doing Next’. Having interviewed the Flying Dutchman myself this time last year at the time of Hollow Man, I can attest to the fact that he always has several answers ready for the inevitable, end-of-interview ‘So what’s next?’ question.

Last July, top of the list appeared to be a movie about American suffragette Victoria Woodhull - a role which Nicole Kidman was lined up to play. But that has now apparently joined a whole slew of projects - Houdini; Crusades; a biopic about Adolf Hitler - on the back-burner as a new one comes to the fore. It’s called Official Assassins, and its subject matter is only slightly less controversial than the Hitler pic.

It apparently tells the story of the race, in the months immediately following World War II, by the Americans and the Soviets to recruit the top German scientists who had developed some of the Führer’s most deadly weapons. Knowing Verhoeven, it is unlikely that the central moral question - why were some Nazis executed for war crimes while others were given well-paid jobs in New Mexico and Novo Sibirsk? - will be passed over in silence.

The script for Assassins is by Michael Beckner, who wrote the upcoming Brad Pitt/Robert Redford movie Spy Game. And Verhoeven reportedly committed to it in early May. The film, sources say, will be made for Mike Medavoy’s Phoenix Pictures and could start shooting in Berlin this autumn.

But there’s a hitch. Only a week after Official Assassins was ‘confirmed’, producer Jeremy Thomas announced in Cannes that Verhoeven would be returning to Europe, not to shoot a Hollywood movie in Berlin, but to make a Dutch film - his first for two decades - in Holland, France and Italy.

Verhoeven’s next film, said Thomas, would be The Source, which he would produce alongside fellow Brit (but long-time Hollywood resident) Alan Marshall. The script, based on a story by Guy de Maupassant, will be by Gerard Soeteman, who wrote many of the director’s best Dutch films, including The Fourth Man.

But what is less than certain is whether or not this will be Verhoeven’s ‘next’ film: the earliest Thomas hopes to shoot it is next spring, which would give the director a chance to make Official Assassins first. Only problem is, Verhoeven’s average turnaround time between pictures has, of late, been around two years. And, like the rest of us, he ain’t getting any younger.

CATTY CORNER: Judd is a different kind of of Catwomanfrom the one played by Simone Simon in the 1942 RKO classic (below left).

WHAT’S THE CONNECTION between Simone Simon, Nastassja Kinski and Ashley Judd? Well, since French star Simon made only one really memorable movie during her five-year stay in Hollywood, that shouldn’t be too difficult for the movie buffs among you.

No? Well, the picture she made was Cat People, the classic horror flick directed by fellow French person Jacques Tourneur at RKO in 1942. And Kinski, of course, starred in Paul Schrader’s 1982 remake, which made sexually explicit all the things that Tourneur’s film only hinted at.

Before you start imagining the rather unfeline Judd transforming into a claw-wielding moggy, however, I should point out that the Catwoman currently being developed at Warner Bros with Judd in the starring role is an original, not a remake. And although precise plot details have yet to be revealed, it would appear that the actress - seen most recently in Someone Like You and just off The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, with Sandra Bullock and Ellen Burstyn - will be playing a character more in the mould of a superhero (think Batman, Wonder Woman and so on) than a supernatural being. The catch, of course, is that she uses her superpowers for a little light stealing. Denise DeNovi will produce and John Rogers is writing the screenplay.

Oh, and by the way, the real Wonder Woman (as it were) is on her way to the big screen, with Sandra Bullock in talks to don the star-spangled corset for Warner Bros.

ZIPPEDY-DOO-DAH

ONCE, A LONG time ago, I sat at the next table to Christopher Walken in a Los Angeles restaurant. No big deal, admittedly. But it did make quite clear that the vaguely cool sense of threat which the actor has made his stock-in-trade since The Deer Hunter (if not before) was pretty much part of his real-life persona. It didn’t encourage you to ask him to pass the salt.

Walken, of course, is now nearly 60 and looks slightly different from his seventies heyday. I’d say The Dead Zone was the definitive Walken performance - a wonderful mixture of aggression and paranoia - although his cameo in Pulp Fiction still carried much the same kind of charge, as did a recent rock video appearance. More recently, though, Walken has toned down the threatening side of his public persona, developing an interesting sideline in cookery programmes (his father was, after all, a baker).

But none of these developments quite prepared me for the announcement that the prince of unease was to play the lead human character in Disney’s upcoming Country Bears movie. For those of you who have never been to Disneyland, I should point out that the ‘Country Bear Jamboree’ is (along with ‘It’s a Small World’) the one attraction to which you can safely take anybody, from very small kids to elderly relations riddled with the kind of complaints they warn you about at the entrance to high-speed rides.

The Country Bear’s are a group of fiddle-and-jug-playing animatronic musicians who specialise in the sort of country music to which no one would ever think of applying the word ‘new’: in their world, even Hank Williams would be too radical. And they are quite simply the last group of entertainers with whom anyone would ever associate Christopher Walken.

But the attraction has been running since the original California park first opened, and Disney obviously felt it was time to introduce the Country Bears to a wider audience. So the film, using animatronics and live action, went into production on March 12. Walken plays Reid Thimple, a banker who is looking to foreclose on the Country Bear Hall. Well, at least he is the bad guy.

The bears, meanwhile, are being voiced by the cuddlier likes of Haley Joel Osment and Charles Dutton.

Speaking of the improbable, who is the second most unlikely on-screen partner you can think of for Hollywood’s current favourite female star, Julia Roberts? (I modified the question to ‘second most unlikely’ after it occurred to me that the most unlikely had to be MTV gross-out guy Tom Green, star of this summer’s Freddy Got Fingered, the most critically reviled movie in living memory).

But second to Green could well be Adam Sandler, whose style of comedy is not that different from Green’s and is not really the sort of thing that Ms Roberts does - or did. But Sandler and she look likely to co-star in an as-yet untitled movie based on a netzine article called Genie in a Bottle: The Sex Drink That’s Rocking Little Rock. The drink in question is apparently called Niagara, and is the female equivalent of Viagra - or rather, it produces many of the same sensations. And they can’t get enough of it in the title (Arkansas) town.

Sandler’s production company, Happy Madison (which is based at Revolution Studios), has bought the article, commissioned a screenplay and approached Roberts. I’ll let you know if she says yes.

The actress, meanwhile, is about to start work on Tracks, based on the true story of a woman who crossed the Australian outback alone but for a trio of camels. And she reportedly wants Mel Gibson to direct her.

Speaking of the Melster, he is reportedly in talks with Pittsburgh wunderkind M Night Shyamalan to take the lead role in his third film, Signs. Bruce Willis took the lead in the other two, each time playing it straight opposite a potential scene-stealer: the diminutive Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense; and Samuel L Jackson as a clairvoyant with a stick and an afro in Unbreakable. Whether Shyamalan, Willis or his co-stars should get the credit, the two films grossed just under a billion dollars between them internationally.

The new movie is going to be the first Shyamalan opus with a rural setting: a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where some mysterious crop circles appear. No prizes for guessing that they are not the work of some prank-playing kid with a tractor.

Disney execs reportedly read the script on a Saturday and had a deal set up with the writer/director before the weekend was over. Gibson - who is currently at work on Vietnam drama We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, directed by Braveheart writer Randall Wallace - apparently didn’t take much longer to get interested. Also likely to co-star is You Can Count on Me discovery Mark Ruffalo.

How long it will all take to come together, however, is anybody’s guess.