Variety reports that John Maybury has signed to direct a new feature film version of Emily Brontë's, Wuthering Heights. Maybury is currently working on the Dylan Thomas film, The Edge of Love (every time I hear that title it just gets worse; sounds like a bad Harlequin novel, but I digress). Olivia Hetreed (Girl with a Pearl Earring) has already written a script, but there is no word on whether she has any changes for the story in mind. Heights was the story of Cathy and Heathcliff. Heathcliff is a rough and low-born hellion and Cathy was a slightly stuck up rich girl. During their time growing up together they find a kind of obsessive love that in the end basically ruins both of them (of course, like most classics, most of the 'good' stuff is clouded in innuendo and metaphor). There is plenty more to it, but if you know the story, then you know that's pretty much the gist of it.

At least three feature film versions have already been made from the book, including a surrealist take from Luis Buñuel in 1954. The most famous is the 1939 version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Other attempts starred the 'much maligned Bond' Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall. Another version in 1992 starred Ralph Fiennes and Heathcliff and Juliette Binoche in dual roles as Cathy and her daughter. Heights was published way back in 1847, so you have to admire a girl who has the nerve to write such a 'saucy' book in those days. It's not often you come across implications of incest and necrophilia in your classic literature. Production is set to begin this fall and casting has already gotten underway. So stay tuned to Cinematical to find out who our next Cathy and Heathcliff are going to be.

Back when the news came out about the cast for the Hitcher remake, I lamented the fact that Sean Bean has somehow turned into the foreign guy that Hollywood tends to cast as a heavy in pretty much anything (either that or he's a really boring, barely-written token male), a tendency that is very much at odds with both his early career and a lot of the TV work he does in England. Well, today comes news that he's been cast in a part that might actually allow him to, you know, act a little bit -- hooray!

Variety is reporting that Bean and fellow Brit Tilda Swinton will play the leads in Come Like Shadows, and independently-financed project being produced by the WB-based Milk & One Sugar. The film is a version of the Macbeth story that, while it will be set during an appropriate time, is expected to be (and this is where things get a little wonky) "user-friendly to a contemporary audience." God only knows what that means, but it makes me a little nervous, just because we can handle Shakespeare that isn't dumbed down, dammit! For Bean, the gig is a return to Macbeth -- he played the role on stage in London three years ago.

Both Steven Soderbergh and Luc Besson are involved in the film as well (the former will executive produce, and post-production will take place in Besson's EuropaCorp facilities), which makes it sound like it might be sort of big and shiny and, just maybe, good. Production begins this fall in Scotland; director will be John Maybury.