Wouldn't you love to go to a theme park that supplied robots to fulfill all of your fantasies or at least watch people go and fulfill their own? Michael Crichton wrote about that very experience in 1973 and now Billy Ray is writing his take on what an android fantasy amusement park would be like in the remake of Westworld for Warner Brothers. In the original film the theme park supplies three worlds in which humans can play in; a Western themepark, harboring the android of Yul Brynner (the dreamiest bald guy I've laid eyes on), a Medieval world and Roman world. Humans paid a hefty $1,000 admission ticket to be satisfied in any way they desired and the robots were programmed to comply. Unexpectedly, the android Brynner begins to rebel against the programming and begins to attack and kill the humans. Eventually, someone puts an end to the android violence (after three attempts, mind you) by sending the gun-slinging Yul Brynner to his death.

Ray, who most recently came out with the February release Breach, with Laura Linney and Chris Cooper, reported to SCI FI Wire that "I love the basic idea of the movie, which is that our amusements can kill us." He didn't give any thoughts as to eventual casting, however. Who would you cast as the gun-slinging android? I vote Bruce Willis circa the current issue of Vanity Fair or Billy Zane ... he was just so spectacular in Titanic.

Billy Ray's new film Breach unfolds in the hazy shades of a Washington, D.C. winter -- steely blues and cold grays, concrete and frost outside and pale fluorescent light indoors. Junior FBI man Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe) is working counter-terrorism, snapping photos from hiding and working on new database methodologies in his spare time -- he's a keener, an eager beaver, and he wants to serve his country and his career. Bureau higher-up Burroughs (Laura Linney) tasks O'Neill with a very specific job -- working as the clerk to FBI data-maven Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), who's heading up the project to create the Bureau's new data-storage and handling protocols ... and, according to Burroughs, is a 'sexual deviant.' O'Neill's supposed to write everything down, make observations, report only to Burroughs and not tell anyone -- even his wife Juliana (Caroline Dhavernas) about the truth of what he's doing. It's hard for O'Neill, but in another way, it's easy -- because, as it turns out, even he doesn't know the real truth of what he's doing.

As played by Cooper, Hanssen is a stiff-backed hard-ass: he hates the Bureau's bureaucracy, resents his office lacking a window, curses the current data-storage methodology the Bureau uses. He's a fervent Catholic, his life revolving around Latin mass and service to the Bureau. In a series of carefully-crafted scenes, O'Neill gets to know Hanssen a bit -- and while Hanssen is a jerk ("Your name is 'Clerk.' You call me 'Sir' or 'Boss.' ..."), O'Neill can't understand why he's being assigned to ride a guy whose biggest crime seems to be being unlikable. Confronting Burroughs about his assignment -- he used to be tracking terrorists, now he's wasting time babysitting a man two months from mandatory retirement -- Burroughs explains the truth behind the truth. Hanssen has been selling secrets to the Soviets. For the past 22 years.

Curious to see if Ryan Phillippe can hold his own against old-school pros like Laura Linney and Chris Cooper? Well, I don't seem to detest Phillippe as much as most movie fans do, and based on the new trailer for an upcoming espionage thriller called Breach, I'm beginning to think that Mr. Reese Witherspoon could soon be coming into his own, respect-wise.

Or maybe he's awful. I've no idea.

I do know that Breach is the first film from Billy Ray since he directed 2003's Shattered Glass, although he did (co-)write the screenplays for Suspect Zero and Flightplan in the interim. Based on true events, Breach tells the story of, no not a Caesarian section, but of the biggest security breach in United States history. Phillippe is the young agent tasked with spying on the treasonous Chris Cooper; Ms. Linney plays a high-level security chief of some sort. Also on board are Gary Cole, Dennis Haysbert, Bruce Davison and Kathleen Quinlan. The cast alone feels worthy of eight bucks.

Universal has Breach scheduled for a February 16 release date.

I guess fake disaster movies just aren't cool enough anymore. I mean, now that our generation has lived through some whoppers (seriously, though, Americans don't even know what a real disaster looks like), we just aren't settling for volcanoes in Los Angeles. And obviously, combining true stories, which audiences love, with cataclysmic destruction presented with stunning special effects, which audiences love even more, puts dollar signs in the eyes of Hollywood studios. It reminds me of Peter Gallagher in The Player pitching a straight-from-the-headlines movie about a horrible mudslide. "Triumph over tragedy," he explains, simply.

So Billy Ray, the writer-director who co-scripted that volcano in Los Angeles movie (Volcano), is currently focusing on true stories of real disasters. First, he tackled 9/11 by writing a script based on the book 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (I'm not sure what the status is on that project). And now he's about to take on Hurricane Katrina for a film he'll write and direct, called Hurricane Season. Based on Franklin Martin's documentary Walking on Dead Fish, the film will follow a Louisiana high school football team in the aftermath of the storm. Universal, the studio involved in the project, must have gold bars in their eyes, since adding a sports element to the true story/disaster combo (though Ray could avoid showing any hurricane action) should attract an even bigger audience.