Hollywood loves dueling biopics -- Columbus, Capote, Amy Fisher; if there's more than one source to mine from, there's more than one movie to be made. The latest figure to get head-to-head films is Charles Darwin. Though I haven't heard anything more on Chase Palmer's take, titled Evolution's Captain, since I wrote about it last November, it is supposed to be released some time in 2009. If that remains true, it will have some company, because Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas is also planning to deliver a Darwin film the same year (the bicentennial of the naturalist's birth).

Thomas' version will be based on "Annie's Box" (aka "Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution"), a bio written by Darwin's descendant Randal Keynes. While Palmer's film should deal more with Darwin's scientific explorations, this one will be centered more on the naturalist's home life, particularly with the death of his daughter Annie, which he blamed on inbreeding (Darwin married his first cousin). The adaptation is being written by John Collee, who I had actually thought would be appropriate for Palmer's film, and will be directed by Jon Amiel. A good guess is that Keynes' son Skandar, who acts in the Narnia films, will get a part as one of Darwin's kids (he had 10).

Other dueling biopics headed your way:

Miles Davis

Marvin Gaye

Chet Baker

Napoleon

Roman mayor Walter Veltroni doesn't seem to be your run of the mill public servant. He lunches with celebrities, writes best-selling books and has even done some cartoon voice work.

Variety announced that Veltroni has made deals for film versions of four of his books; three features and one documentary about Africa have been planned for 2007. The first will be the doc God Isn't Feeling Well and is based on Veltroni's own diaries during a trip to Africa. Veltroni's collection of short stories Senza patricio, which is set in Argentina, was also optioned and will be directed by Gianni Amelio. Other projects include a biography of Italian Jazz great Luca Flores (who played with Chet Baker) with Kim Rossi Stewart in the lead and a thriller about international terrorism based on the best-seller La scoperta dell'alba. There have been some grumblings that Veltroni uses a ghostwriter for his books, but Veltroni (a former editor of the lefty Italian daily L'Unita) claims the books are entirely his own creation.

Luckily Veltroni says he is an insomniac -- which is a good thing -- because between his new career in the movie business and his political ambitions, it looks like he is going to be a busy man in the new year.

You know how, just the other day, I was talking about how projects seem to come in pairs? And how the latest example of the phenomenon was the two projects about exactly the same period and relationship in Napoleon's life? Well, just a few days later, Screen Daily's got another story for us about dueling projects (though, in this case, the director of the newest entry insists there is no fighting going on whatsoever).

The subject in question this time is Chet Baker. Already the focus of two movies in various stages of production, the jazz icon is also going to be the subject of a new project from Richard Linklater -- at least that's what the director is telling people at Cannes. According to Linklater, his film, planned as an independent project, with be "a small jazz movie" rather than a sweeping biopic. Instead of examining Baker's entire career, Linklater's film -- entitled Chesney -- "will look at one day in the life of the jazz legend before he was famous." Hmm. I'm not much of a Linklater fan, but this sounds like a vaguely intriguing idea, sort of akin to Christopher Münch's The Hours and Times, a wonderful little film about an imagined weekend shared by John Lennon and Brian Epstein. Of course, it could also being a totally uninteresting movie about a good-looking kid who plays trumpet -- we'll just have to wait and see.

Josh Hartnett, whose career appears to have gone into mini-revival mode with the pending releases of Lucky Number Slevin and The Black Dahlia, is also hoping take advantage of the current explosion of music biopics. According to Variety, Hartnett is in talks to play the title role in the forthcoming The Chet Baker Story, which will likely be directed by Bruce Beresford. The screenplay was written by co-producer Julie Allan, and is an adaptation of James Gavin's bio of the jazz superstar, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker. With his prominent cheekbones and dark eyes, Hartnett actually looks a bit like Baker, so this is one of those rare celebrity castings that isn't completely outrageous - one hopes that he's actually become as good an actor as James Ellroy claims, and might be able to do justice to the role.

Interestingly, there's another Baker picture in the works, also based on a book. Looking for Chet Baker, however, is a novel-based thriller, which is in an earlier stage of development than the Hartnett project.