Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg will jointly present their friend George Lucas with his BAFTA/LA Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for excellence in film at a Los Angeles ceremony on Friday. Both men are longtime collaborators with Lucas, who will be gearing himself up for next month's release of the fifth Star Wars installment, Episode Two - Attack of the Clones. Ford appeared as Han Solo in the first three films, while Spielberg directed and developed the idea for the Raiders of the Lost Ark franchise with Lucas.
Kevin Costner is planning to direct Open Range, a Western for Disney in which he will also co-star with Robert Duvall. "It's a piece about a way of life coming to an end and the violence that accompanied it, which was the hallmark of settling the West," Costner said in an interview. "It is also a poetic piece that deals with a code of friendship and people who were willing to die abiding by that code." Costner has dabbled in the Western genre several times before and with considerable success. He appeared in Silverado, Wyatt Earp and Dances With Wolves, for which he famously won best director and picture Oscars in 1991. Shooting on Open Range is due to start in Alberta in June.
Clare Kilner (Janice Beard: 45 Words Per Minute) is in the frame to direct American starlet Mandy Moore in the Miramax romance How to Deal. Moore will play a disillusioned teenager who finds love. "Clare has a really wonderful visual style and a quirky insight, which is exactly what this movie needs," New Line production exec Stephanie Striegel gushed to the Hollywood Reporter.
David Duchovny has signed to play James Elroy in an adaptation of author's autobiography, My Dark Places. The project is being produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope. As you would expect, the story deals with several key incidents in the writer's extraordinary life, including his own investigation into the murder of his mother in the 50s. Duchovny will also be seen in the forthcoming Steven Soderbergh drama Full Frontal.
