Samuel L Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones are set to share more than just middle and last initials: they're finally doing their first film together - Rules of Engagement, which recently rolled under William Friedkin at Paramount.

Based on a script by former US Secretary for the Navy James Webb, the film is about a soldier (the part Jones will play) whose military career comes to an end when he is wounded in Vietnam. He retrains as a lawyer, then finds himself defending the man who saved his life in 'Nam (Jackson, natch). The latter's character is still in the army, and is charged with violating the rules of the title, thereby inciting an incident which results in several demonstrators being killed.

Jones also looks likely to join Clint Eastwood in his intergalactic horse opera, Space Cowboys; where he will play one of four members of a veteran crew hired to fly a crucial space shuttle mission. Eastwood will be another and the other two have yet to be hired. If John Glenn can go into space, reckon the producers, why not Eastwood (69 at the end of May) and Jones (a mere 53 come September)?

Jackson, meanwhile (who just turned 50), is set to star in a remake of what is possibly the most famous blaxploitation picture of all: the 1971 hit Shaft, directed by Gordon Parks and starring Richard Roundtree as the afro-haired super shamus who spent a lot of his screen-time in the sack. The new version - first mentioned here back in September 1996 - is to be directed by John Singleton from an updated script by Richard Price. "I loved the original and think it will be a very cool thing to do almost 30 years later," Jackson told Variety in February.

The movie, incidentally, is back at Paramount (when we last mentioned it, Singleton was set to take it to MGM), with Scott Rudin as producer. Other blaxploitation remakes allegedly in the pipeline include Superfly and Cleopatra Jones.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL...

Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Will Smith... Pretty soon, they will all have played the title role in a movie adaptation of a 1932 Adela Rogers St John story called What Price Hollywood? Of course, it became better known when Gaynor starred in what had, by then, been retitled A Star Is Born in 1937, and became best known of all in George Cukor's 1954 version, when Judy Garland rose to fame while James Mason sank into alcoholism.

A Star Is Born is now due for its fourth remake at Warner Bros, but with the genders switched: Smith will play the newcomer who is taken under the wing of a famous female singing star (yet to be cast, but multiple Grammy-winner Lauryn Hill is reportedly top of the list), whose career tumbles as a result of substance abuse.

The film will be produced by Jon Peters who holds the rights, having handled the most recent remake with his then girlfriend, Barbara Streisand, in 1976. Smith, soon to be seen in Barry Sonnenfeld's Wild Wild West, may well make the film after he has played the title role in a biopic about Muhammad Ali.