An Academy Award-winning filmmaker has chosen his next project. Kevin Macdonald has signed on to direct Roman epic The Eagle of the Ninth, according to an announcement in Cannes by Focus Features. Macdonald won an Oscar for his superb documentary One Day in September and guided Forest Whitaker to his Academy Award for Best Actor in The Last King of Scotland.

Scotland co-writer Jeremy Brock adapted the screenplay for Eagle from the novel of the same name by Rosemary Sutcliff, the first in a series, originally published in 1954. The book is set in the second century in Roman-ruled Britain, telling the tale of a young Roman's search for "the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion," according to Wikipedia. Focus emphasizes the danger involved, with its hero off "to confront ... savage tribes, make peace with his father's memory, and retrieve the lost legion's golden emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth."

I guess now that the great Chess master Bobby Fischer has passed into the great chessboard in the sky earlier this month, it's open season on biopics. Variety reports that Last King of Scotland director, Kevin MacDonald, has signed to direct Bobby Fischer Goes to War. The film will be a drama based around Fischer's famous match against Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship. Spassky was a seven time Champion and was ranked as one of the top ten players in the world from the 1950's to the 1980's.

Fischer was born in 1943, and by the time he was 15, he was one of the most celebrated players of chess and a Grandmaster. He remains the only American born player to ever win the World Chess Championship. Perhaps, he is most famous for the mystery surrounding his life. As the years passed, Fischer bounced from Hungary, Germany, the Philippines and Japan. At the time of his death he was an Icelandic citizen who had become more and more isolated due to anti-American and anti-Semitic comments that he had made in the press.

The script is based on David Edmonds and John Eidinow's book of the same name. Shawn Slovo (Catch a Fire) has already been tapped to write the script and the story will put the chess match into the context of the real contest that emerged between the Americans and their Cold War combatants. So far there is no word on the cast, or more importantly who will be playing the bizarre Fischer. Production on Bobby Fischer Goes to War will commence later this year, so stay tuned for any updates that come our way.

With this latest bit of news, one things for certain: Kevin Macdonald is hurting when he should be playing. State of Play already lost Brad Pitt in November. He was having a slew of issues with the director, and decided to back out of his deal, which instigated Universal to make some threats of legal action. It was particularly crappy timing for the project, since it was set to begin filming when the actor bailed. Word later came that Pitt wasn't happy with the script, and thought it needed work. Presumably not interested in waiting the strike out, Universal disagreed, so they turned to wooing Russell Crowe to replace Brad.

The production will now begin in January, and Variety reports that star #2 is backing out -- Ed Norton. This departure, however, is because of a clash in start times -- State of Play now interferes with Norton's other project, Tim Blake Nelson's Leaves of Grass. So Eddie is out, and Universal already has its replacement -- Ben Affleck. So, as it stands now, Ben will be the "fast-rising politician who is caught up in a murder conspiracy. Crowe will play a journalist who leads a newspaper's investigation into the killing. He's conflicted in that he once ran the politician's campaigns, and he is now romancing his estranged wife." Still on the cast list, at least for now -- Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn, and Jason Bateman. There is the possibility that Mirren will be the next to go -- she has a potential conflict with the upcoming Love Ranch, but they're trying to work things out.

So I ask you: Should State of Play frolic away, or is it time to shelve the project?

If you've been waiting eight years for Edward Norton and Brad Pitt to light up the big screen again, then your wait is officially over. The two were last seen in the highly successful, mind-bending Fight Club back in 1999, and will now be appearing together in State of Play. The film looks to be another heavy hitter as it will be directed by Last King of Scotland's Kevin MacDonald and is based off of the British miniseries bearing the same name. Variety tells us the film has been in the works for quite some time (we first reported on it here, and then here). Universal Pictures received the rights to the Paul Abbott series and Pitt was verbally on board right from the get-go (they feared throughout the script's rewrites he would be wooed by another project, but luckily this didn't happen).

The film is definitely asking Pitt and Norton to bring the serious acting gloves back out in a story that involves political power, murder, love affairs and the compromising of police investigations. Norton will play the politico whose future gains are thwarted by a lover's death and Pitt plays the journalist who becomes too involved with the women in the investigation. Now if they would just cast Meat Loaf in some kind of role, we'd truly know what Peaches and Herb were singing about in 'Reunited.'

It should be a green-tie affair at the opening night gala of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. The event, happening April 25, will be hosted by Al Gore and is set to feature some entertainment that will focus on the global warming issue. This entertainment is part of a partnership with the SOS (Save Our Selves) Campaign, which raises climate crisis awareness and will include live performances from some of the artists participating in SOS' Live Earth concert series happening on July 7. The acts set for the gala weren't revealed, but some of those involved with the Live Earth shows include Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Mayer, John Legend, Black Eyed Peas, Korn and Melissa Etheridge, who recently won an Oscar for the song she wrote for the Gore-featured documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Also, the night will include the premiere of seven short films, each of which deals with the problems and the solutions of the crisis and each of which is shorter than ten minutes. The directors and titles of these shorts were not yet revealed either, because the seven showcased films have not been chosen yet. They will be selected by the festival's planners from the 60 shorts that were commissioned by SOS. Some of the filmmakers who participated include Jonathan Glazer, Kevin Macdonald, Abel Ferrara, Amy Berg, Ari Sandel, the doc duo Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady and someone from Aardman Animation (Peter Lord? Nick Park?). It isn't completely made clear, but it seems that all 60 of the commissioned films will be shown during the Live Earth event. So, if you can't make it to New York City for the world premiere of the seven shorts, you can see at least those if not all of them at one of the concerts (so far the only locations announced are Shanghai, Sydney, London and Johannesburg, while the cities in the U.S., Brazil, Japan and Antarctica are TBA). I probably won't be able to attend the gala or one of the concerts, so hopefully there will be another place for me to see the films. After all, this is the best news for shorts fans since Cannes' announced its own opening night compilation.

How do you turn an award-winning, six-hour British television mini-series directed by David Yates and starring Bill Nighy into a feature-length motion picture and expect it to work? Well, first you get Brad Pitt to star, which the producers of State and Play State of Play* took care of months ago. Then, you hire a director who is good at providing a filter between two cultures, like Oscar-winner Kevin Macdonald. Universal has just announced MacDonald's attachment, with shooting set to begin this fall). An added bonus for the remake would be to now cast Nighy, Kelly Macdonald and James McAvoy -- he's no stranger to working with Kevin Macdonald, of course -- to reprise their roles (I'm not sure who Pitt is filling in for). Of course, this isn't necessary nor does it make sense for a film about American politicians.

It will still be difficult to completely adapt the mini-series, especially editing the length down, but Matthew Michael Carnahan has apparently already turned in a script the studio is happy with. The plot involves the murder of a congressman's mistress, which is a story we've previously seen in one form or another on television and in film. Regardless of what some people thought of The Last King of Scotland (I loved it), Kevin Macdonald should be the one to make this thing into one of those rare good Hollywood products. Pitt probably won't get the same out of working with Macdonald as Forest Whitaker got (especially since everyone considers it to have been all Whitaker's doing), but I'm sure he's fine with Angelina having the only Oscar in the family.

*Thanks to Gerry for noticing my mistake with the title.

For anyone familiar with Marcel Ophuls' Oscar-winning documentary Hôtel Terminus, it might seem strange that another filmmaker is taking a stab at the life of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, aka the "Butcher of Lyon." Kevin Macdonald, who also won a doc Oscar for One Day in September and who just recently released his non-doc debut, The Last King of Scotland, has made My Enemy's Enemy, which reportedly concentrates more on Barbie's employment by the CIA than with any other part of his life. He says the film, "is a version of history where, in contrast to what we were all told, fascist ideology prevailed." It is also more than likely meant to parallel other times in history when the U.S. collaborated with past or future enemies.

Just how bad was this guy, that the U.S. shouldn't have been working with him and aiding him? Barbie was called the "Butcher of Lyon" because while head of the Gestapo in the French city, he was responsible for 4,000 deaths. After World War II was over, he began working for British intelligence and the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corp. When his service for our government was over, he was able to flee, with help from the American government, to Bolivia, where he lived another thirty years until he was captured, brought to trial and sentenced to life in prison.

The Weinstein Co., which is always happy to release a controversial doc, picked up the film this past weekend at the American Film Market, but haven't made any announcements for time of release. The Weinsteins know a little about collaborating with the enemy, as they recently threw a gala for Wal-Mart.

More doc controversy from The Weinsteins:

NBC Loves Bush, Hates Dixie Chicks

In politics, as in most other aspects of life, we make choices and drive events either by our action or inaction -- but at what point do the choices we make cross the line into the realm of moral culpability? The Last King of Scotland, directed by documentary filmmaker Kevin MacDonald, explores this issue through the fictionalized tale ("based on true events") of a young Scottish doctor who quite unexpectedly finds himself the personal physician and closest adviser to one of the world's most notorious dictators, former Ugandan president Idi Amin. The young doctor, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy, who's having one heck of a good year, with roles in two other major fest films, Starter for Ten and Penelope), has come to Uganda to escape the boredom and constriction of life as a family doctor, working with his father. Garrigan seeks adventure and excitement and, in his spare time, wants to help make Uganda a better place, so he goes to work in a remote medical clinic. At the clinic, he meets Sarah (Gillian Anderson), the wife of the doctor who runs the place, and soon becomes enamored of her.

Welcome to conspiracy Wednesday! This morning Variety has news on two movies, both of which involve secret groups of evil people trying to do terrible things to Americans (and we say Hollywood is out of ideas). The first, entitled Greenbacks, sounds like the superior project, but that's more because it's set in Morocco than because of either plot. Sorry to mislead you like that. In the movie, our hero Will Smith will accidental discover a Shocking! plot "to destabilize the world's economy by mass-producing perfect counterfeit greenbacks." I think it's safe to assume that Will will save the world again, though he's more likely to battle printers than aliens this time around. (Or is he?) Sadly, the screenplay for Greenbacks hasn't even been written yet, so it'll be a while before we get to watch exciting things happen in Morocco.

The second conspiracy extravaganza, 28th Amendment,* takes place on a much smaller scale. The film, which was bought based on a pitch way back in 1999, "revolves around a young U.S. president who discovers the existence of a secret cabal that runs the government and wants him dead." I don't know about you, but I always like a good cabal. After sitting on it for seven years, Warner Brothers are finally ready to go ahead with the project, and have assigned it to director Kevin Macdonald, whose One Day in September (about the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics) won the best documentary Oscar in 2000. There is, however, no screenplay yet, so this one will be a while, too.

*As of this morning, there was no 28th Amendment. Whatever could that nasty cabal have up its sleeve?