· Chernin Entertainment, the production shingle of former News Corp honcho Peter Chernin, has announced their first major acquisition: They've purchased the rights to the Moses story from God, for a rumored mid-seven figures. The plan is to turn it into an effects-heavy, 300-style (read -- very homo-kosherotic) action tentpole. All the greatest hits will be there -- the Plagues, the Parting of the Red Sea, the Burning Bush; but screenwriters Adam Cooper and Bill Collage -- who just wrote a sexed-up spin on Moby Dick for Timur Bekmambetov -- are also delving into the Midrash in search of lesser-known biographical details. (Eg. Moses invented hang gliding; was deathly afraid of spiders; played a very primitive version of the saxophone; etc.) [Variety]
Next up in Hollywood Ink: A hell of a hangover, Angelina is the new Charlize, and Bryan Singer might head back to the mutant academy.
· Speaking of guys with horns -- Stephen King's son Joe Hill has sold the rights to his upcoming novel Horns to Mandalay. It's about a 26-year-old guy who wakes up from a blackout with a raging hangover, only to discover he's grown two horns that keep getting bigger. He then sets about trying to solve the mystery of where they came from. (The answers might lie inside a camera's memory chip, and its digital evidence of a toothless grandma who serviced him in a hotel elevator the night before.) [Variety]
· Just one word: kudos. Mike Nichols will receive AFI's Life Achievement Award. [Variety]
· Angelina Jolie is in talks to replace Charlize Theron in The Tourist, who has abandoned the remake of the French thriller she's long been attached to. Also gone is director Bharat Nalluri. The only person sticking around is Sam Worthington, who won the role Tom Cruise had once flirted with. Worthington: Still a star. [Variety]
· Iran blocked popular actress Fatemeh Motamed-Aria from traveling to the U.S., detaining her at Tehran airport on her way to L.A. "because of [her protest] activities in post-election events," a local newspaper reported. #someonecallshohrehaghdashloo [THR]
· He's flirted shamelessly with Cylons and King Arthur, but Bryan Singer is now saying he's ready to return to Dr. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, telling a Korean Film Festival that he's "been talking to Fox about it." [THR]