If you ask me, it's about time that Michael Douglas got the chance to play with his reputation as a lady killer and, frankly, a bit of a hound. ComingSoon recently got the chance to speak with The Spiderwick Chronicles director Mark Waters and managed to score a little casting scoop for his next project, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. According to their sources, Douglas is in talks to appear in the comedy alongside Matthew McConaughey.

The story centers on "a womanizer (McConaughey) who attends the wedding of his younger brother and bride. There, he's haunted by several old flames, including the bride's best friend. Douglas will play "Uncle Wayne, a '70s playboy, who was his mentor and he wears Bob Evans shades and guides him (McConaughey) around the ghost world". The cast also includes Jennifer Garner as one of McConaughey's exes, Lacy Chabert (Black Christmas) as the bride, as well as Anne Archer and Emma Stone (Superbad).

Originally, the film was set to star Ben Affleck with Betty Thomas directing. The production hit a snag when Disney shut the film down and Affleck walked away from the film. Maybe Affleck just wasn't looking forward to all the conversations at home on the subject of previous girlfriends. McConaughey then rode in to save the day and now the film is back on. Plus, I have to agree with Waters when he says that, "There's something great about Matthew. He has an aspect of him that he can get away with murder with women. He's the kind of guy where women are apologizing to him when he breaks up with them, because he's so charming". Girlfriends Past will start shooting February 19th in Boston and will hit theaters sometime in 2009.

The pieces have now fallen into place for the upcoming Mark Waters romcom The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Back in September, Jennifer Garner was circling the long-gestating project, which already had Matthew McConaughey so surprisingly attached as the lead womanizer. (Fun note: Jen's hubby was originally attached to the film, but now she gets to run around with another guy instead.) Now The Hollywood Reporter has laid out the plot and main players. Matt and Jenn will be joined by Breckin Meyer, Lacey Chabert, Anne Archer, Amanda Walsh, and Emma Stone.

So, McConaughey is "Connor, a womanizer who attends the wedding of his younger brother (Meyer) and bride (Chabert). There, he's haunted by several old flames, including the bride's best friend (Garner)." I have to say, it's strange to think of Meyer as an adult and not a Clueless skater, or to think of Chabert getting married. Man, I'm getting old. Anyway, by "womanizer," they're not meaning just a deluge of sexy women who are Connor's age -- Archer, who will play Chabert's mom, is also "a potential Connor conquest," while Walsh will be the one "bridesmaid he hasn't conquered." (Canadian audiences will recognize her as the ex Much Music VJ.) This suggests that Garner is definitely the school sweetheart, since she's Chabert's best friend, but not the one girl who hasn't gotten it on with Connor. (Unless, for some reason, her best friend isn't in her wedding party.)

Stone, finally, will lead Connor through his womanizing wasteland. A move from Superbad paramour to supernatural guide isn't bad at all. Production begins this month in Boston.

Allegedly a feature film, Caffeine is closer in tone and spirit to a 90-minute sitcom pilot, with its no-stakes relationship crises, strictly-for-laughs supporting players and peppy, robotic score that seemingly emanates from one of those Yamaha keyboard guitars we all got for our seventh birthday. The setting is an English lunch spot, where plate-slinger Vanessa (Mena Suvari) spars with co-workers, acts frustrated by life and tries in vain to pronounce the word "row" in believable British. Suvari's attempts at the Queen's English provide the bulk of the film's humor, while the intended laughs are mostly packaged into sketches, including one where a lunching boyfriend discovers his girlfriend is in porn -- don't you hate it when that's revealed over a tuna san? -- and begins a yelling fit that gets him booted out. Bit concluded, the film returns to its character plotlettes, then segues into another bit, and so on, until we finally reach a musical closing credit sequence so unabashedly awful that watching it will cause your face to melt off like those Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Slaving away in the pristine, mostly foodless kitchen alongside Vanessa is Rachel, (Marsha Thomason) a character who suffers from an absurd inferiority complex that causes her to believe she'll be "letting everyone down" once she moves on, in the near future, to a better job than short-order cook. After lending an ear, Vanessa tells her "quite frankly, I think you deserve something more." Gee, thanks Vanessa -- if only you had been my guidance counselor. Rounding out the main-character quartet is the insufferable Breckin Meyer, playing a kitchen drone/aspiring writer who smokes his cigarettes like a twelfth grader and Mark Pellegrino, a William Forsythe-lookalike who plays a five-alarm gay character who is forever planting his hands on his hips and leading with his chin, as if director John Cosgrove thought exaggerated gay mannerisms alone were comedy gold. Add to this two sensitive stoner characters, each a kind of toxic smelting of Zach Braff and Ashton Kutcher, who alternate between doing hits in the diner bathroom and talking women troubles at their seemingly permanent lunch table.

In the tradition of the convenience store in Clerks, the record shop in Empire Records and the theme restaurant in Waiting comes ... the coffee house in Caffeine. Frankly I'm stunned that nobody came up with the "wacky ensemble comedy that takes place in a coffee house" before now, but here it is all the same. Just because this new trailer is packed with silly sex jokes, stupid scatology and infantile antics, don't mistake it for all those other movies. This one comes with British accents!

From director John Cosgrove (who once directed an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, so you know he's got skills) and first-time screenwriter Dean Craig comes a trailer that proves, once and for all, that the Brits can do poop humor with the best worst of the American actors. Starring several photogenic young folks (and a few familiar faces like Mena Suvari, Breckin Meyer and the adorable Katherine Heigl), Caffeine is set for a limited release on March 17. And most likely a quick trip to Walmart's $5.50 bin a few weeks later.

More odds and ends than you can shake a stick at:

• I have to admit that I'm sort of amused by this concept: a movie about someone who actually followed through on their threat to move to Canada when Bush was elected. Entitled Blue State, the film stars Anna Paquin as the mover (which is funny, what with her being from Canada and all) and Breckin Meyer as the token male, and will be produced by Paquin Films - bet you can't guess who owns that sucker.

• You know that movie Woody Allen is going to make in Paris? Well, he's taking a Brokeback wife along: Michelle Williams has reportedly agree to star. She'll be playing, well, one of a bunch of Americans. In Paris. For the love of God, Woody -- throw us a plot-bone!

• Because we can never get enough heartwarming stories (Has anyone actually tested that? Personally, I hit my limit about 13 misunderstood youths ago.), Aaron Eckhart has ridden the Thank You for Smoking wave into yet another one. Eckhart's personal story of redemption is called Bill, and he'll star as "a man fed up with his job and marriage who bottoms out when he catches his wife cheating. He finds a catalyst for a resurgence when he reluctantly mentors an unruly teen." Ah, the unruly teen. How many lives have they saved? The movie starts shooting next  month.

• When I tell you that Universal has acquired a story about a small town "saved by baseball," what do you imagine? A touching, period piece? Or perhaps a story about a town triumphing unspecified tragedy by coming together behind an underdog high school team? Ah, but you'd be wrong -- gloriously, bizarrely wrong! In fact, Time of the Their Lives is about people who literally DON'T DIE because they play baseball. (I hope this doesn't mean that they actually play 24/7. How impractical would that be? Not to mention boring.) Then, somehow, a misguided kid gets the town involved in "a winner-take-all game between townsfolk and the devil's ringers" for his own soul. While I admit the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, it sounds more than weird enough to be interesting. Right?