I bet a whole lot of our astute and sci-fi-addicted readers remember the 1970 Joseph Sargent / James Bridges flick called Colossus: The Forbin Project -- and you can bet that producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard remember the movie too. It looks like they'll be teaming up with Universal to mount a remake of the cult not-so-classic. The plan is to use the original film as sort of a jumping-off point. Up and coming screenwriter Jason Rothenberg will be using three books by D.F. Jones as his source material, which means yes: That's probably a franchise you smell brewing.

As Variety handily points out, Colossus has a lot in common with movies like The Terminator and The Matrix, although (obviously) this one came first. It's about a pair of hyper-brilliant super-computers (one Russian, one American) who get "linked up," only to decide that mankind deserves to be enslaved and therefore threatens the planet with nuclear devastation. (Hmm, I think I need to see this movie again.) But like I said, Mr. Rothenberg will be using two extra books when penning his screenplay, so the new-fangled adaptation will probably look a whole lot different than the 1970 version.

Anyone else out there just add Colossus to your Netflix queue? I know this news sounds like "just another remake," but I don't see it that way. It's not like Universal considers "Colossus: The Forbin Project" a well-known film. More likely that Rothenberg loves the books and did what he could to get his new adaptation off the ground. Plus, "computers gone wild" is a really fun concept. (Other movies that feature computers too smart for their own good include 2001: A Space Odyssey, WarGames, Short Circuit and Electric Dreams.)

The latest in casting news from Cannes:

• Laura Dern has joined the cast of Tenderness, the Russell Crowe-starring indie flick we told you about last month. The movie takes on the unsettling subject of a teenage serial killer and his romantic entanglement with a damaged runaway girl. Crowe plays a cop who tries to figure the kid out; it's not clear what role Dern will play. The movie begins shooting this week in New York.

• Sean Mathias is directing Colossus, based on Ann Harries' Manly Pursuits, a novel about the Boer War. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film's scored a pretty impressive cast, considering that its budget is a relatively small $15 million: Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, Ian McKellen and Susan Sarandon are all on-board. Though it's not yet been announced which roles the stars will play, the movie "tells of ailing arch-colonist Cecil Rhodes' [probably McKellen] belief that he can only recover his health if he can hear the sound of English song birds outside his window in Cape Town." Get this: Someone is sent from England with 500 freaking songbirds. When he gets there, he falls in love and decides he needs to stop the Boer War from happening. Ah, if only all men in love would immediately resolve to end wars -- what a lovely world this would be.
  

• Oscar Wilde is coming back to the big screen, this time in the hands of Janusz Kaminski, who is directing an adaptation of A Woman of No Importance. Set to begin filming this fall, the movie is about "an ambitious young man, Gerald Arbuthnot, who introduces his prospective employer, Lord Illingworth, to his mother." Because this is Wilde, it turns out the man has a bit of a history with the mother, and in fact is Gerald's dad. Oops. Set to star in the film are Annette Bening, the ubiquitous Lindsay Lohan and the under-appreciated Sean Bean. Thank the lord someone is letting Bean do something funny -- he's been sporting a macho glower for, like, two decades.