While the collection of features that began with Red Road never got off the ground, the UK is trying again, with a different sort of feature. (One that will hopefully be fully completed and released.) Forget about a long drama like Zodiac -- Variety reports that three directors have signed on to helm films about the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper in the 1970s and early 1980s -- each taking a certain time-span of the crimes, based on David Peace's collection of books called Red Riding Quartet.

The books were adapted by Tony Grisoni, who did a heck of a job on the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas adaptation, with Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane) to cover Nineteen Seventy-Four, James Marsh (Man on Wire) to tackle Nineteen Eighty, and Anand Tucker (Shopgirl) to helm the final installment, Nineteen Eighty-Three. (Nineteen Seventy Seven will be split amongst the three other features.) The films will be brought together into a television series, with a theatrical release to follow (one that hopefully includes overseas distribution).

The tale of the Yorkshire Ripper -- Peter William Sutcliffe -- is pretty grisly. (Check that link for the whole story.) He was convicted in 1981, and while he is still alive, he has gotten a bit of the "eye for an eye" treatment from fellow criminals.

Last we heard about Samantha Morton, Christopher Campbell was praising her work in Control. Now the Daily Mail reports that she's about to direct her first feature with Revolution Films-- one that will not only have her traverse the world behind the camera, but also travel through her own past. The film is currently called The Unloved, and she is working on the script with Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

Morton says: "The story will be fictionalised, but it's my story. The things that happened to me in care will be there, but I think it's easier to tell it if it's fictionalised, because I'm going to weave in other stories about other kids." Still, it should prove to be an immensely personal project, and I have a feeling that it won't be overly saccharine and sentimental. We must remember that this is the woman who reminisced about "a drama club story about a young Morton taking improv too far -- 'He whispered, 'The other girl's stolen your hamster.' So I beat the crap out of this girl and they didn't ask me back.'"

If she can keep the snark along with the dramatic punch, this could be a fine flick. Morton isn't sure if she'll take a role in the film herself, but casting should commence soon, once the script is completed, and they're looking to begin production in September.

In the 45th case this year of (at least) two competing movies about the same historical figure being made at the same time, another biopic of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick has been announced, just weeks after news of a similar film surfaced. The first Dick biopic (That just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?) was written and will be directed by 1980s one-hit wonder Matthew Wilder, and stars boring Bill Pullman as Dick. Wilder's film, entitled Panasonic, will reportedly be a comedy in which "The lines between reality and perfection blur ... Paranoid conspiracy theories of the highest order, drug-fueled interdimensional shifts, and 1970s pop-culture combine for the mind-bending adventure of the century." Got that?

The new Dick project, on the other hand, is fully authorized by Dick's estate, and is being co-produced by the estate's Electric Shepherd Prods. Currently untitled, the film is described as a "nontraditional biopic [which] will interweave the prolific author's life with his fiction and incorporate elements of his last unfinished novel, The Owl in Daylight", and will be written by Tony Grisoni (who, having also helped write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, seems the perfect choice). The increasingly prolific Paul Giamatti, already on board as a producer, is currently in negotiations to star in the film.

There's no word yet on a start date for either project, but since the screenplay for Panasonic is already done, that one would seem to have a head start.