Oh, Tom Cruise ... you make it so hard not to bash you. Last time I wrote about ol' Tommy, I focused on the excellent, insane rumor that he and John Travolta wanted to redo Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But this one doesn't seem to be a rumor.

Variety reports that while screenwriters "have been taking haircuts on every deal," Tom's script doctors are making a ton -- sometimes as much as $250,000 a week for 2-6 weeks. The job: Take Cruise's notes and hone the scripts for his upcoming movies. The pressure is on to continue Tom's post-Tropic Thunder buzz!

The doctors and projects in question: Scott Frank is changing up Wichita so that Cruise can be an action hero, Richard Curtis made some changes to Lost for Words, and Paul Attanasio is flipping rewriting David Cronenberg's script for Matarese Circle. Furthermore, those free of script doctors are not immune to Tom's notes: Billy Ray "continues to hone" Motorcade, while Christopher McQuarrie does the same with The Tourist.

Actors always seem to meddle a bit with their scripts, but this takes that to a new level. And really, it hurts my heart to think that Tom Cruise is guiding Cronenberg's vision, or rather, tainting it. And why on earth are they paying so much to have a struggling star get his way? Thunder might have helped win him back favor, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth.

Okay, maybe Tom Cruise and Valkyrie screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie won't be together forever ... but they are in for a very long haul. Variety reports that McQuarrie is penning no less than three projects for Cruise to star in.

The first up is likely to be The Tourist, which has Cruise and Charlize Theron attached as the leads. A remake of the French thriller Anthony Zimmer, the original script was penned by Julian Fellowes. McQuarrie is quickly rewriting it so that the film can begin shooting by March.

The pair also might be returning to World War II, as McQuarrie and Mason Alley are teaming up to write Flying Tigers, the real life story of a volunteer fighter squadron that was formed to assist the Chinese in fighting the Japanese during WWII. Cruise isn't formally attached, but he has been itching to do another fighter pilot movie since the days of Top Gun.

But the most intriguing film on the McQuarrie-Cruise slate is the UA project The Champions, which McQuarrie is penning and producing alongside Guillermo del Toro. Based on the British television series about super-powered government agents, it's now being developed for Cruise to star in. It was inevitable that Cruise was going to want in on this whole "superhero" trend -- the aura around his Tropic Thunder costar Robert Downey Jr. was espcially hard to miss. How could he not want some of that? Remember, he's already attached to Sam Raimi's Sleeper, so he's obviously waking up to the trend and franchise potential of superpowers. Well, best of luck to McQuarrie and Cruise -- may the relationship be a fruitful one.

He was once the hottest thing on the planet; she was most recently a secret selling point of a summer blockbuster. Will a first-time teaming of Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron melt the universe? If negotiations get finalized, they'll be united in awesomeness in the upcoming thriller The Tourist, according to Variety.

Cruise is set to play the titular role of an American vacationer who gets sucked into a dark world of espionage when an Interpol agent taps him to help her catch a sneaky bad guy. Don't you hate when that happens? If only I could count the number of times I've been recruited while on vacation to assist a gorgeous, highly-trained government agent do her job. Theron would play the agent, a woman with a past romantic history with the wily master criminal. I must ask again: why do all the beautiful ladies always fall for the irredeemably corrupt yet charming bad boys?

My guess is that Theron uses Cruise to make her old boyfriend jealous, but I haven't seen Anthony Zimmer, the French original that serves as the basis for The Tourist. Maybe that doesn't matter, because the original's plot has evidently been changed around. In Anthony Zimmer, the female lead was not a law-enforcement officer but instead the criminal's current mistress.

Will Tom have hidden talents that blossom only when forced into the role of a reluctant warrior? Will Charlize fall for a typical American tourist dressed in Bermuda shorts and black socks? Will sparks fly between Tom and Charlize? Time will tell; production is slated to begin by next March under the helm of director Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day).

Having just watched Tropic Thunder last night, my head is half full with Tom Cruise's performance. I won't spoil it, but I will say that he's got more than just a brief blip in the film, and at times, the Scientology stigma that's plagued him lately just dropped away. Of course, that led me to the conclusion that he needs more comedy to get his career back on track, but while he IS starting a Food Fight, he's also looking for more spy action.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that he's in negotiations to star in the remake of the French spy thriller The Tourist. This is the feature that Bharat Nalluri signed on to direct in June, that focuses on an American tourist who becomes a pawn in a female Interpol agent's dangerous game. Basically, a money launderer changes his name and face, but this tourist looks like the guy, and is brought into the mess and set up as the bait.

Personally, I wish he'd just stick with the laughs right now, but what do you think? Would Cruise make good bait? And check out our recent What Should Cruise Do Next Poll where 47% of you currently feel he should do a comedy.

Last October, Warner Brothers picked up the rights to a book in the works by Olen Steinhauer called The Tourist, a story focusing on a spy who is falsely accused of murder and has to clear his name. And now we're getting another movie called The Tourist. However, this one is based on the French thriller, Anthony Zimmer, and Variety reports that Bharat Nalluri -- the man who helmed Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day -- will direct it. Talk about confusion -- a movie based on another movie, but shares the same name as yet another movie.

Casanova director Lasse Hallstrom was originally set to direct the film, but left the project a while ago. Now Nalluri will take on Julian Fellowes' (Gosford Park) script, which focuses on "an American tourist who finds his life in danger when a female Interpol agent uses him as a dupe to flush out an elusive criminal with whom she once had an affair." It's sort of like a Dave / Moon Over Parador film -- Zimmer is this money launderer who changes his face and voice, and a common man who looks like Zimmer is pulled into the mess as bait.

Production on the film is set to begin late this summer, or early fall.

Because there can never be enough thrillers, and there's no point waiting for the book to come out before you want to adapt it, we've got word of the next upcoming book that's already been picked up for feature treatment. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Warner Brothers nabbed the movie rights to an upcoming book by Olen Steinhauer, a two-time Edgar Award nominee, called The Tourist. Only in "early manuscript form," it's said to be similar to John le Carre and Graham Greene, and it focuses on the typical fare of the spy who is falsely accused of murder and risks everything to clear his name.

The producers for this little project will be none other than Smoke House's George Clooney and Grant Heslov. The company has been pretty busy lately, getting projects out. There is Leatherheads, the Clooney-directed film that has just hit post, White Jazz, the James Ellroy adaptation that's being tackled by Joe Carnahan, and they're also developing an adaptation of Farragut North, a play by Beau Willimon. Considering the fact that Clooney sometimes helms these productions, I wonder if this will be a cut-and-dry production gig, or if he'll get extra-involved. Whatever the case, we've got to wait for both the book and the screenplay to be written before anything else.

Back in August, Martha had the news that Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman had signed to co-star in The Tourist. The story follows a man who is introduced to an underground sex club by an enigmatic "friend" who may not be who he appears to be -- are they ever? It's no surprise that things turn sour when the club may be involved in a young woman's disappearance.

Variety announced that Natasha Henstridge has joined a cast that also includes Oscar nominee Michelle Williams, Maggie Q, and Robert "Toshi" Kar Yun Chan. There is no word on Henstridge's character but since she has made a career out of being "the hot girl" it really doesn't take much imagination to guess that she will most likely spend most of the film half-clothed. Lately, Henstridge has been steadily working in TV with parts in Commander In Chief and a slew of TV movies and mini-series. Henstridge really never managed to hit the A-list when it came to movie projects and I don't think she will ever fully live down the Species franchise, but this seems like a pretty high profile drama, so it might be her shot at some better parts in the future. Considering this is the same actress who said, "yes" to Ghosts of Mars; I'm pretty sure they couldn't get any worse. The Tourist is still shooting on location in New York so it should be a while before we get a release date.

[via ComingSoon.net]

Maggie Q has been one busy gal lately, and it doesn't look like her schedule is letting up anytime soon. Already well known to audiences in Hong Kong, she played small parts in Rush Hour 2 and the forgettable Around the World in 80 Days, and she had her first big breakout role opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III.

Q recently finished filming the ping-pong crime comedy Balls of Fury with Christopher Walken and George Lopez, has just been cast with Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman in the sexual thriller The Tourist. She will go directly from shooting that over the next few weeks into the terribly named Die Hard sequel, Live Free or Die Hard (this movie is going to tank if they keep that title).

We're all for actresses from foreign films breaking out into larger roles, but Hollywood frequently brings stars over from other countries, and then doesn't seem to know what to do with them. The talented Swiss actress Irene Jacob made her dubious first American film appearance in U.S. Marshals, which was her last "Hollywood" film and Audrey Tautou recently appeared in The Da Vinci Code, although her next two projects will be back home in France.

Maggie might be bitten pretty hard by the Hollywood bug, but she is currently in Pusan promoting Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon, a period Chinese film for which she has had to learn how to ride a horse, play a pipe, and speak an ancient language. According to Q, "Just because I'm working in Hollywood these days doesn't mean that I've turned my back on Asia. I will go anywhere in the world where there is good material."

Good for her. With any luck she'll still have a career after Die Hard: Freedom Fries.


More Maggie Q on Cinematical:

Cinematical Seven: Movie Nerd Fantasy Camp -- Re-Casting Star Wars!

Odds and ends from Monday:

• Wouldn't you like to enter a sex club to find Michelle Williams waiting patiently inside? According to the New York Daily News, the actress is set to star alongside Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman in The Tourist, to be directed by Michael Langenegger. Pic, which starts shooting in NYC next month, revolves around an accountant (McGregor) whose lawyer (Jackman) introduces him to a secret sex club where he meets the woman of his dreams. Things look great, until she goes missing and he's implicated in a $20 million theft. Man, talk about getting screwed ... in more ways than one.
• Kelly Preston and Stuart Lafferty have signed on to play Kevin Bacon's wife and son in Death Sentence. And, as much as we wish the full title was actually Footloose 2: Death Sentence, it ain't gonna happen. In the pic, Bacon plays a man who makes it his mission to hunt down the gang who brutally attacked his family ... by dancing on them. Ha, I wish.
• Director Andrzej Bartkowiak has managed to escape the Doom surrounding his last film, and is currently in negotiations to direct the thriller Black and Blue, written by Jimmy Cummings. Pic revolves around a Boston cop who finds himself stuck in the middle of a drug war between the Irish mob and a group of young thugs. However, things become even more complicated when he discovers that some of his own family members might be involved. Dammit Grandma, I told you to stop selling all that smack!

Production Weekly just reported that Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor have agreed to star in The Tourist (Jackman's involvement was originally announced at Cannes), a movie that sounds a whole hell of a lot like Fight Club, except with screwing instead of fighting. Here's the summary: McGregor will play Jonathan, "an accountant disconnected from life, who is reinvigorated by his new friend Wyatt (Jackman), a powerful and charismatic lawyer who introduces Jonathan to a mysterious sex club known as The List." Personal awakening brought about by cool new club? Check. And there's more: "Shortly after meeting the woman of his dreams, Jonathan becomes the number one suspect in not only the woman's disappearance and possible murder but also a 20 million dollar theft." Major crime, and the sudden realization of the sketchiness of your new best friend? Check and check. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying I won't see it, just that it's Fight Club, 2006.

The film was written by Mark Bomback, Patrick Marber and Jason Keller, and will be directed by first-timer Marcel Langenegger; production is expect to begin in New York in October.