AN ALL-SINGING SPIKE?

He’s made big studio biopics, gritty indie features, documentaries and more or less everything else. But Spike Lee has yet to make a musical. Well that (as I’m sure you must have guessed from the introduction) could be about to change, as the director explores the possibility of bringing the Broadway hit Rent to the big screen.

A very New York story (which may be why, unlike most Broadway hits, it didn’t quite duplicate its success abroad), Rent tells the story of a group of young people living in and around a NYC building, coping with all the things that young people in the Big Apple have to cope with (which are much the same things as young people everywhere cope with, generally rather less noisily and neurotically).

The film has been in development at Miramax, and Lee has yet to commit to it. And it’s not as though the director is a complete stranger to the world of song and dance, however: after all, his last feature, Bamboozled, was about vaudeville. But the thought of him working with a choreographer on a big mainstream musical number is an intriguing prospect.

As to how one of America’s more radical directors makes his living between movies, a recent press release from Jaguar North America throws some light on the matter. Turns out that Lee’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has just completed a couple of films promoting the new X-Type to affluent young African Americans. The spot ends with a couple of Jag engineers delivering a new X-Type to Striver’s Row in Harlem, traditionally the home of those African Americans who have striven to reach new levels of affluence. “We are expecting to broaden our appeal and attract a more diverse customer,” says a Jaguar representative.

Lee has also directed a short film in which Janet Jackson swans around in an X-Type, which is shown before each Jackson concert. I’m sure it’s all for the best, but it seems a long way from Mars, the angry cyclist Lee played in his 1986 breakthrough feature, She’s Gotta Have It.

CHEW ON THIS, MARTY

It was probably all the column inches surrounding the soon-to-be-seen Gangs of New York that did it. Here was Martin Scorsese, best-known for claustrophobically intense dramas, suddenly going all epic. What else was Francis Ford Coppola to do?

The answer? Not explore the rank world of 19th-century New York, but create a future city which would be more or less a microcosm of humanity. Quizzed recently by Daily Variety’s Army Archerd, Coppola declared he had a budget - not more than $80 million - for the film, which will be called Megalopolis. There are also, he said, roles for a lot of actors who had worked with him in the past, like Robert De Niro and nephew Nicolas Cage, and a few others who haven’t, like Paul Newman and Russell Crowe. There are even hints that he will be able to raise the money to make the movie on his own - just like he did with, er, One From the Heart.

Crowe, meanwhile, is planning to cash in on his post-Gladiator bankability by turning his hand to directing - not to mention writing and producing. The film in question, The Long Green Shore, is set in the Pacific at the end of the war, and is based on a novel by John Hepworth about an Australian battalion forced by their gung-ho commander to engage in bloody action despite the fact that the war is all but over.

Although he is next expected to play a mathematician in A Beautiful Mind, the Australian star has reportedly been turning down all manner of other projects because he is so determined to make The Long Green Shore, which is expected to shoot next summer. Oh, and you won’t be surprised to hear that he also plans to star in it.

Given the HUGE success of Rush Hour 2, it’s not surprising that there are quite a few Jackie Chan projects currently floating around in the Los Angeles inversion layer.

Perhaps the most intriguing is the suggestion that he should star in a remake of the Jerry Lewis comedy, The Bellboy (1960). Actually, there’s nothing especially new about the idea: it has been in development at MGM since long before Rush Hour 2 was even made. But, with that film’s record-breaking opening, it has gone onto a fast(er) track. It doesn’t have a director yet, but it will be set in Las Vegas where, of course, MGM owns a rather large hotel.

Dating back to a month or so before the early-August release of Chan’s latest movie, meanwhile, is a plan to put him together with one of Hollywood’s other recently imported Asian stars, Jet Li, who scored a pretty sizeable hit this summer with Kiss of the Dragon. The film in which they will both star doesn’t have a title yet, but it will be made by Joe Roth’s Revolution Studios some time in the second half of next year. The two stars will executive produce - an indication of the extent to which, over the past couple of years, both have moved to the heart of the Hollywood establishment.

And both, by the way, are being kept pretty busy. Chan has already completed The Accidental Spy; is preparing a DreamWorks comedy called The Tuxedo; and is scheduled to do a Shanghai Noon sequel called Shanghai Knights (clever, eh?). Li has been making a Chinese movie, Hero, with Zhang Yimou this summer, and is next expected to take the lead in a Miramax action title in which he plays a Tibetan monk in New York.

GRADUATING TO DIRECTION

He’s held out longer than most. But Dustin Hoffman is finally thinking about making his feature directorial debut. The star - to whom, given memories of The Graduate, it is hard to attach the usually required moniker of ‘veteran’ - has been involved behind the camera since the mid-nineties, when he set up his own company, Punch Productions.

That company has four completed movies to its credit - including a couple featured in Preview: American Buffalo and Over the Moon. More recently, there has been Boys and Girls. But Hoffman has generally taken a back seat (except for American Buffalo, in which he starred). It will, however, be as a multi-hyphenate that he approaches Personal Injuries, which is based on the latest legal thriller by Scott Turow. Hoffman will direct, produce and star in the film, which is being made in association with Disney. No start date or further cast members have yet been announced.