Hollywood Ink: Santa Coens to Drop True Grit Down Your Chimney

· Joel and Ethan Coen may still be seeking their missing link for the cast of their new True Grit adaptation, but their patrons at Paramount are officially moving forward with a Christmas release date in mind. The Oscar hypologist in me draws only one conclusion: For his role as Rooster Cogburn, which won John Wayne an Academy Award in 1969, Jeff Bridges will be doing the awards-season grind all over again next year. Which I'm sure he's thrilled about right now. Anyway, now you've got holiday plans for the family, unless the MPAA ratings board intervenes, which we've seen before. Grinches. [Variety]

Screenwriter Ronald Harwood has a dream (assignment), Marc Webb is already downsized (sort of), and more Hollywood Ink after the jump.

· DreamWorks has tapped screenwriter Ronald Harwood to adapt its long-awaited, long-troubled film about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. This is the authorized project that the 'Works has been cultivating with the slain civil-rights leader's fractious kin; reigning Hollywood biopic kingpin Harwood, who won an Oscar for The Pianist and was nominated for another for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, will have access to King's papers and other intellectual property while drafting his next awards-bait front-runner. [Deadline]

· Well, there's good news and bad(-dish) news about director Mark Webb's recruitment to reboot Spider-Man for Sony. The bad(-dish) news: Webb is not, as initially reported, ironclad into making the next three films in the franchise. But! Sony does have an option for him on numbers two and three, which is essentially the same thing, right? As long as Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson don't wind up conflated with Sid and Nancy in some Webb-made viral video somewhere, it's his franchise for the long haul. [Deadline]

· A few indie acquisitions dropped Tuesday in advance of Sundance, with IFC Films picking up Cannes not-so-darling head trip (and Sundance selection) Enter the Void, and Apparition grabbing the dark, comedic Aussie thriller The Square. [THR, THR]

· Filmmaker Jonathan Levine will have a busy year, following his recent inheritance of the Seth Rogen/James McAvoy project I'm With Cancer with an assignment to write and direct the horror romance Warm Bodies, about a zombie who develops a relationship with a living human. Have all the high hopes you want for it, but I can almost promise you this was better when it was called Zombie Honeymoon. [THR]