Citing clashing schedules - a considerably less inflammatory excuse than ‘creative differences’ - Nicolas Cage earlier this summer pulled out of the movie version of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin due to be directed by Roger Michell. The hunt was briefly on for an actor of sufficient stature for (and, some might say, more suited to) the role of the gentle, romantic musician who enlisted in the Italian army to have more time to play his instrument. But then the schedule clash evaporated at the end of August and Cage is currently on track again.

He is also back on board Family Man, which was mentioned on these pages last December. At that stage, it was a possible Curtis Hanson project. Then Hanson went off and did Wonder Boys and Cage did Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. With Rush Hour director Brett Ratner at the helm, however, Family Man is now scheduled to start shooting in early November.

Another version of the currently fashionable ‘what if’ comedy, the film stars Cage as a successful workaholic banker who has always had a feeling he should have married his college sweetheart, settled down and had kids. One morning, he wakes up and finds he did and he has. No word yet on who will play the sweetheart.

Not many radical manifestos can boast a 100% commercial success rate. But the Danish Dogme ‘95 movement, which aims to remove unnecessary artifices like props, lighting and music from its films, appears to have achieved just that. The first three features made under its auspices - Lars von Trier’s The Idiots, Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen’s Mifune - have all achieved wide international release. But, while von Trier follows his own eccentric route - he is currently making a musical in Iceland with Catherine Deneuve and Björk - Vinterberg is taking the more time-honoured path for those with a successful European art-house movie under their belts: he is lining up to make an English-language film.

The Third Lie, based on all three books in Agota Kristof’s trilogy (only the third of which is called The Third Lie, the first two being The Notebook and The Proof), is the story of identical twins Lucas and Klaus who are separated at the age of four. Lucas begins to keep notebooks, creating a fantasy life for his twin brother. But it is not until they are reunited after a lifetime that the difference between Lucas’ notebooks and the much grimmer reality begins to emerge.

Vinterberg will write the screenplay with regular collaborator Mogens Rukov, and The Third Lie will be produced by Andras Hamori for Alliance Atlantis Pictures.

He’s Middle America’s worst nightmare and has so far been kept under control, if only because his shows are put on in well-policed stadiums and his records played behind the firmly shut doors of teenage bedrooms. But, if all goes well at New Line, the leering, mascaraed face of Marilyn Manson will soon be invading the malls and the multiplexes.

Plans are afoot for the heavy metal rocker to star in a movie called Marilyn Manson’s Holywood [sic], which is still being written but which New Line confidently expects to get into production before the end of the year. No word yet on what the story will be, beyond the suggestion that it will be ‘visual’ - which puts it in the potential company of Prince’s Purple Rain and Pink Floyd’s The Wall rather than, say, the screen appearances of Sting or Mick Jagger.

Also making his movie debut in the next few months will be the equally controversial Snoop Dogg (he dropped the ‘Doggy’ a couple of years ago). The Long Beach-based rapper will play a ghost who wakes up from a 20-year sleep and sets out in search of his murderers in Bones, which is also being made for New Line.

The movie will be directed by Ernest Dickerson, who worked with Spike Lee as director of photography on a number of films then made his directorial debut with Juice and Surviving the Game. The latter film (featured in Preview in September 1993) starred another rapper, Ice-T, in what was also a debut screen performance. It was also (inevitably) a New Line movie.