There are a few short announcements today. Brideshead Revisited is getting a film version, Westlife star Brian McFadden is trying to get into Hollywood, Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected gains more cast and the Halo film battles continue.

Ben Wishaw and Matthew Goode have been cast in Julian Jarrold's version of Brideshead Revisited which is due to start shooting later this year according to Variety. I really can't see this working out too well, is there really a call for a film about rich, upper-class characters? Well I suppose it did make a splash on UK TV some time ago.

Brian McFadden is one of the Westlife guys who left Westlife and famously burned all his money on gambling and fast cars as well as doing the daft Hollywood thing of marrying someone after a stupidly short amount of time and having kids with them before getting divorced. Basically it's the same old celebrity magazine story. Now though he's trying to get into Hollywood and regain some of his lost money and a new career. According to The Daily Mail he went to castings last year in LA with his girlfriend Delta Goodrem and made such an impression that he has meetings with Steven Spielberg, that is according to their sources. Spielberg has a couple of roles which would be ideal for him...again, we're told that.

Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected, the story of Adam Stein who was a circus entertainer who was spared the gas chamber so that he could entertain other Jews as they were taken to their execution. Jeff Goldblum is already lined up to play the lead with Willem Dafoe also joining him. Now we hear from Variety that a strong line up of talent is joining them:

Ayelet Zurer ("Munich"), Moritz Bleibtreu ("Run Lola Run"), Hana Laslo ("Free Trade Zone"), Joachim Krol ("Maybe, Maybe Not"), Evgenia Dudina ("Love and Dance"), Juliane Koehler ("The Downfall"), Moni Moshonov ("Every Time We Say Goodbye") and Veronica Ferres ("No Snow")

I'm definitely excited to see the excellent Bleibtreu joining the film, it looks set to be a harrowing and superbly acted film.

Halo may be dead in production, but in pre-production there's still a fair degree of fighting about it all. According to reports both 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures are fighting over the alleged millions that have already been spent on the development of it, development that lead to the cancellation of the project. According to the story over at Deadline Hollywood Daily through IGN, Universal want Fox to pay 50% and Fox are saying that they should have been asked about some of the costs before they were spent. Spilt milk and all that.