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Frank Miller has penned the follow-ups to hit comic book adaptations 300 and Sin City.

The writer, whose new film The Spirit is in cinemas, revealed that the sequel to 300 is being "polished", while work on Sin City 2 is to begin before the second half of 2009.

He said: "The word I have heard is that we are going to get into production in April and I can't wait."

However, Miller was quick to dismiss reports linking Johnny Depp and Rose McGowan with the film, saying: "We haven't started casting."

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Daniel Craig has claimed that the Bond movies help him to avoid suffering a mid-life crisis.

The 40-year-old actor revealed that he is able to act out his fantasies on-screen in scenes which depict 007's lavish lifestyle.

"I hope I'm not going to have a mid-life crisis," Craig explained. "I mean, I'm having a mid-life crisis as they go - I'm driving around in an Aston Martin and wearing sharp suits and sort of going around with beautiful girls."

He added: "I'm acting my mid-life crisis out on movies."

Craig, who has taken on the role in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, recently credited his family and friends for keeping him "grounded".

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Movie producers are said to be looking to make a film about Take That.

The proposed story is said to follow the band during the years after their split, with Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Mark Owen and Jason Orange struggling to find solo success away from the group.

"The boys thought it would be a great idea. It is something they have thought about doing but never got the idea off of the ground. It is still supposed to be very hush-hush, though," a source told The People.

"The reunion will be the best bit. Take That have been huge since they got back together."

It is not known whether former bandmate Robbie Williams will team up with the group for the project.

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Sally Hawkins has won the best actress prize from the National Society Of Critics in the US.

Hawkins picked up the award from the organisation, made up of film reviewers from publications across the country, for her role in Mike Leigh film Happy-Go-Lucky.

Leigh was named best director by the panel while co-star Eddie Marsan scooped the best supporting actor gong.

Sean Penn picked up the best actor award for his role in political biopic Milk, while tightrope feature Man On Wire won best documentary.

Hawkins is hotly tipped to be nominated for an Oscar in the best actress category.

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Dustin Hoffman has revealed that he struck up an instant rapport with Emma Thompson on the set of their new movie.

The pair co-star in Last Chance Harvey, in which a US tourist begins an unlikely friendship with a British woman after they meet at Heathrow Airport.

Hoffman claimed that he and Thompson had a special understanding once the cameras rolled. "The agreement was that we could throw each other. We could say something that would kickstart something in the other," he said.

"Most of the time in this film we aren't really sure where the scene is going or what the other one is going to say."

He added: "Somehow we know each other in a way that's hard to express, at least when we're working together. We both agreed that it would never work in life."

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Eva Mendes has revealed that she would like to have played some of the roles taken on by Kate Winslet.

The actress said that she is a big fan of Winslet and would like to "steal" two of her previous parts.

"I would steal Kate Winslet's roles. All her roles. Don't talk to me about it because she can do no wrong in my eyes," she told the Mail On Sunday.

"Not only is she the most amazing actress in the entire world, she's nude a lot in her films which shows she's just fearless. Her choices are impeccable. She literally can do anything. If she can just give me two of her roles, I'd be happy."

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Marley & Me has retained its position at the top of the US box office chart.

The Jennifer Aniston comedy, which revolves around a couple who adopt a hyperactive puppy, pulls in $24 million to hold on to first place over the New Year period.

With no new releases, the top seven movies are unchanged from last week - Bedtime Stories, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie and Yes Man round out the top five.

Elsewhere, Meryl Streep's Doubt rises two places to number eight and Slumdog Millionaire makes its top ten debut as it expands its release.

The US top ten in full:

1. (1) Marley & Me - $24,050,000
2. (2) Bedtime Stories - $20,317,000
3. (3) The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button - $18,400,000
4. (4) Valkyrie - $14,042,000
5. (5) Yes Man - $13,850,000
6. (6) Seven Pounds - $10,000,000
7. (7) The Tale Of Despereaux - $7,020,000
8. (10) Doubt - $5,031,000
9. (8) The Day The Earth Stood Still - $4,850,000
10. (13) Slumdog Millionaire - $4,770,000

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Oscar winner Forest Whitaker is in talks to join the cast of Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables, says The Hollywood Reporter.

The action movie will star Stallone, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren and Jason Statham as a band of mercenaries dispatched to overthrow a South American dictator. Whitaker is expected to take on the role of a CIA operative who liaises with the group.

According to production company Nu Image/Millennium Films, rumours that Stallone is courting his Demolition Man co-star Sandra Bullock for a part in the film are untrue.

The Expendables marks Stallone's first directorial effort since last year's Rambo.

Whitaker recently appeared in Street Kings, Vantage Point and The Last King Of Scotland, for which he won an Oscar.

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John Curran has signed up to direct Keira Knightley in The Beautiful And The Damned, reports Variety.

The Painted Veil director stepped in after The Notebook's Nick Cassavetes dropped out of the project last year.

The period drama revolves around the tempestuous relationship between writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre, who were familiar faces on the New York social scene in the 1920s.

Knightley will play Sayre. No other casting decisions have been announced yet.

Fitzgerald has been experiencing a recent revival in Hollywood. His short story inspired Brad Pitt's The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, while Baz Luhrmann recently acquired the rights to The Great Gatsby.

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Danny Boyle has admitted that he cast Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire on the advice of his daughter.

The British director said that he struggled to find an actor to portray the film's lead character Jamal Malik, a young man who enters the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, because all the candidates were too muscular.

"I thought, 'That doesn't look right for the film, he's meant to be an underdog.' You're meant to think, 'What's this guy got? Nothing apparently,'" Boyle said.

Boyle, the director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, revealed that his daughter recommended he cast Patel, who at the time was starring in E4's Skins.

"My daughter said, 'You should watch him in Skins', because I couldn't find someone and I thought, he's the right guy."

However, the filmmaker insisted that Patel's mother kept away from the set.

"We had to get rid of his mum because he was only 17 when we met him and his mum was kind of looking after him and making sure he didn't come to any harm," he explained. "I thought, we can't have a romantic lead with his mum in attendance, so we had to get rid of his mum - not literally obviously, she's lovely."

Slumdog Millionaire lands in cinemas this Friday.

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Actor Pat Hingle has died from blood cancer at the age of 84, reports The AP.

Hingle, who played Commissioner James Gordon in the first four Batman movies, passed away at his Carolina Beach home on Saturday after a two-year fight against myelodysplasia.

The actor's film, TV and stage career spanned more than 50 years. Along with his recurring role in the Batman franchise, Hingle appeared opposite Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront, with Sally Field in Oscar-winning drama Norma Rae and Warren Beatty in Splendor In The Grass.

His last high-profile role was in 2006 comedy Talladega Nights.

Hingle is survived by his wife Julia Wright, five children, 11 grandchildren and two sisters.

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Emma Watson has confessed that she will be "ready" to leave the Harry Potter film series after completing work on The Deathly Hallows.

The actress, who has played Hermione Granger in the wizard franchise since 2001, told MTV that she has mixed emotions about leaving the character behind.

She said: "It will be bittersweet. It will be very scary because it's been such a massive part of my life. It will have been nearly over a decade that I'd been playing Hermione.

"It'll be tough but I’ll be ready to go I think. I'll be ready to take on other projects. It will be exciting."

Discussing Warner Bros's decision to split Deathly Hallows into two parts, Watson claimed that she knows little about where the divide will take place but expects the first part to end on a "cruel cliffhanger".

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David Fincher has admitted that he does not want to make a sequel to 1995 thriller Se7en.

The movie, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, is Fincher's most successful but is not a story he wants to return to.

"I have less interest in that than having cigarettes put out in my eyes," he told an audience at a Film Society of Lincoln Centre discussion.

Fincher also spoke about new film The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, for which he reunited with Pitt, saying that its meaning has been misinterpreted by some.

"It's funny, but when we first showed this movie to people, they thought we were showing how these people were fated to be in love. That was the antithesis of what we were trying to do. I was trying to illustrate that youth is not wasted on the young," he said.

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GARY OLDMAN has wed for the fourth time.
The Dark Knight star, whose previous wives include UMA THURMAN, married jazz singer ALEXANDRA EDENBOROUGH in a secret ceremony in California.

The couple sparked speculation of an engagement when they appeared together at the Los Angeles premiere of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button in December.

And they tied the knot last week in Santa Barbara with agent DOUGLAS URBANSKI as best man.

“Yes, they were married in Santa Barbara. I was best man,” confirmed Urbanski.

The British-born couple are now based in Oldman's adopted city of Los Angeles.

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Mickey Rourke has revealed that he found his scenes with Evan Rachel Wood in The Wrestler difficult.

The actor, who plays Wood's father in the movie, described their dialogue as some of the film's most emotionally resonant.

"The more heavy emotional scenes were with the very young and talented Evan Rachel Wood. They were the hardest to do. It was all about a father and a daughter," he is quoted as saying.

"He was more concerned with being on the road and wearing his tights than he was with bringing up his daughter."

Rourke described working with Marisa Tomei, with whom he was reported to have clashed during filming, as "an experience".

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Director Frank Miller has revealed that he struggled to cast the lead role in The Spirit because of the lack of macho leading men in Hollywood.

The Sin City co-director eventually chose Gabriel Macht to play the eponymous hero, noting that he did not want a recognisable star leading the movie.

"It was a very long process but I demanded at the beginning that the Spirit be someone you'd never seen before," Miller said. "I didn't want you to think of this as another role for Val Kilmer.

"We interviewed dozens and dozens of people. It was very difficult because we were interviewing them in Hollywood. There's a bit of a problem in that Hollywood breeds many a good male actor but it breeds very, very few men.

"We had to find someone who could play not only a man but a hero. And not only a hero, but one who could stumble from time to time and one who could look a bit foolish - especially when beautiful women are around, which they are in abundance. Gabriel walked away with the part."

The Spirit, which also features Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson, is out in cinemas now.

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Leonardo DiCaprio has claimed that script problems are holding up his Theodore Roosevelt biopic with Martin Scorsese.

The actor told USA Today that he is hoping to make a movie about the 26th US President his fifth collaboration with Scorsese.

"We have been developing that project for a long time," he said. "But the script is not there yet. It's the eternal thing."

The Body Of Lies star added that he will play the "very young Teddy" in the film.

DiCaprio has featured in Scorsese's Gangs Of New York, The Aviator and The Departed. The pair's next movie Shutter Island, about a World War II veteran on the hunt for his wife's killer, opens in cinemas later this year.

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Adam Shankman has signed on to develop and produce a remake of musical Bye Bye Birdie for Columbia.

The Bedtime Stories director will produce the project alongside Memoirs Of A Geisha's Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

Bye Bye Birdie is centred on the character of Conrad Birdie, a popular rock star based loosely on Elvis Presley. Birdie is drafted into the army but agrees to do one last publicity stunt involving kissing a teenage fan on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The original 1958 musical has spawned several film and television adaptations, most notably the 1963 movie starring Dick Van Dyke.

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Jim Carrey's latest vehicle Yes Man has topped the Australian box office chart.

The Peyton Reed-helmed slapstick comedy knocks Brad Pitt's The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button into second place.

Meanwhile, animated canine adventure Bolt enters at four, while Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson's comedy Marley & Me debuts at five.

Adam Sandler and Russell Brand's family fantasy movie Bedtime Stories holds on to third spot.

The top ten in full:

1. (-) Yes Man - $2,966,066
2. (1) The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button - $2,123,609
3. (3) Bedtime Stories - $1,712,911
4. (-) Bolt - $1,702,465
5. (-) Marley & Me - $1,697,535
6. (4) Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa - $1,448,542
7. (5) Australia - $1,373,076
8. (2) The Day The Earth Stood Still - $1,164,691
9. (6) Twilight - $900,080
10. (9) Slumdog Millionaire - $488,312

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Jimmy Hayward has been hired to direct comic book adaptation Jonah Hex for Warner Bros, says The Hollywood Reporter.

The Horton Hears A Who! director will make his live-action debut on the film, which is described as a supernatural western featuring a disfigured cowboy.

Hayward replaces Crank duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor on the film, who wrote the script but quit as directors in November citing creative differences.

W. star Josh Brolin is attached to play the eponymous gunslinger, with the movie expected to begin production in March or April.