Any future PhD student looking to put together an auteurist thesis on director Shekhar Kapur will have his or her work cut out establishing a link between the film-maker’s most recent movies. Having grabbed international attention with Bandit Queen, a violent and politically controversial action/drama set in his native India, Kapur followed it up with the art-house hit and Oscar-nominee Elizabeth. Now, he has signed to make an action/adventure movie at DreamWorks.

Air Pirates is based on the colourful real-life exploits of aircraft salvage specialist Gary Larkin, whose style was distinctly gung-ho. But the film’s story is about one of Larkin’s least typical assignments: to discover what happened to a WWII flyer who disappeared on a secret mission.

The film is still at the script stage, and casting announcements are some way off. It is also not clear whether Air Pirates will be made before another project to which Kapur is attached: the Anant Singh-produced Nelson Mandela biopic, Long Walk to Freedom.

You would have thought Postcards From the Edge - actress-turned-writer Carrie Fisher’s bitter (if comic) account of an actress whose career is constantly overshadowed by her attention-grabbing mother - would have done it as far as collaboration with her own real-life mother was concerned. But Carrie’s Mom, the not noticeably publicity-shy Debbie Reynolds (whose on-screen equivalent was played in Postcards by Shirley MacLaine), is all set to take a leading role in another of her daughter’s screenplays.

Nor does the title seem designed to flatter Ms R - or, for that matter, either of the other two senior female stars set to appear alongside her in the film: Lauren Bacall and Shirley MacLaine. Those Old Broads is still at an early stage, but is reportedly on the roster at Disney, with the possibility that Elizabeth Taylor may sign up as Broad No 4. “It’s a charming story - great characters, all actresses and it would be a scream,” Reynolds told Daily Variety’s Army Archerd.