CATCH HIM IF YOU CAN

AFTER ALL THOSE forests that had to be felled so that the world could read the latest speculations on the role with which Leonardo DiCaprio was going to follow Titanic, it’s hardly surprising that the young actor’s post-Beach career hasn’t provoked quite the same frenzy.

DiCaprio, of course - as readers of this column will know - is currently in Rome, shooting Gangs of New York for Martin Scorsese. So he wasn’t even in town for the announcement of the film with which he will follow that. It will (apparently) be a thriller called Catch Me If You Can (not, clearly, to be confused with Bob Rafelson’s similarly named sixties movie, Catch Us If You Can, starring the long-forgotten Dave Clark Five).

The new film - which will reportedly be directed by either Gore Verbinski or David Fincher (although how any movie could simultaneously be an equally natural follow-up to both Mouse Hunt and Fight Club entirely escapes me) - is based on the true story of Frank Abagnale Jr, a con man and impersonator who is the only teenager ever to make it onto the FBI’s ‘10 Most Wanted’ list. In a two-year career, Abagnale impersonated everyone from a Pan Am pilot to a paediatric surgeon, and forged cheques to an estimated value of $6 million.
Catch Me If You Can will be a DreamWorks movie, and is expected to go into production early next spring.

YOUNG AT HEART

AFTER THE RATHER limited success of his college drama The Skulls, director Rob Cohen is sticking with the youth theme for his next film, which will again be a far cry from the ‘big’ vistas of his two previous movies, Dragonheart and Daylight (both of which - like The Skulls - were featured in Preview). But the setting won’t be the Ivy League college world of the latter: the new movie is called Redline and is about the world of Californian street racers.

Filming started in Los Angeles at the end of July, with the two lead roles taken by Vin Diesel (last featured in these pages as the prisoner who becomes a hero in the sci-fi drama Pitch Black) and Michelle Rodriguez, who made her screen debut in the Sundance winner and Cannes Directors Fortnight entry, Girlfight, in which she played the lead role of a boxer.

Also starring in Redline - previously known as Racer X - are Paul Walker, Jordanna Brewster and Rick Yune.