Proof that Hollywood's generals are always preparing to fight the last war comes with the news that Disney has entered into a deal with Mel Gibson's Icon Films to produce another ancient epic in an obscure dialect featuring more unknown actors wallowing in further geysers of blood.
The film, provisionally titled Apocalypto, is set 500 years ago in Mexico and will feature dialogue spoken in the Mayan tongue. Itzamná, the supreme Maya deity, may well have his followers around the world, but Disney and Icon will not be able to count on the Christian support that made The Passion of the Christ such an extraordinary success. What do they know that we don't?
Tubeway army
Those who believe that terrorists should not be permitted to set the agenda for film-makers will be satisfied to hear that the producers of V for Vendetta, the film for which Natalie Portman went all baldie, have decided not to remove scenes of bombings on the London Underground from their flick.
Joel Silver, producer of Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, might have adopted a less celebratory tone, however. "It's a great time for this movie," he said. "It's a controversial film and it's a controversial time. It's going to make people think." The adaptation of Alan Moore's bleak comic is due here in November.
Passion of the anti-Christ
John Moore, the Dundalk-born director of Behind Enemy Lines and Flight of the Phoenix, has been signed up to direct a remake of that delightful piece of post-Exorcist hooey, The Omen. Moore's formidable talent for organisation will come in useful as The Omen 666 is scheduled to start shooting in a little over two months' time. Somewhere in cyberspace somebody is sure to be organising a petition to secure David Warner a cameo. Quite right too.
Adding insult to injuries
The US military establishment, which really should have more pressing priorities, does not much care for the official website of the hit comedy Wedding Crashers. Echoing a scene from the film, the site offers surfers a cut-out-and-keep Purple Heart. Wearing the medal - which is awarded to US soldiers injured in combat - will, it seems, "guarantee you attention, admiration and plenty of free booze".
Thomas Cottone Jr, a former FBI agent who is promoting a law prohibiting the misuse of medals, invited the producers to visit a military hospital with him. "Talk to some of these people who don't have legs any more and see how funny they think that movie is," he said. New Line Pictures has since removed the offending gag from the site.
Big-time bluffers
Last week Estella Warren, the slug-lipped star of Planet of the Apes, swept aside such huge-brained punters as Carson Daly, Shannon Elizabeth and Wanda Sykes to win Bodog.com's celebrity poker tournament in Hawaii. But her achievement pales beside that of the wonderful Jennifer Tilly. In June the breathy one-time Bride of Chucky won the Ladies' No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em Competition, thus becoming the first celebrity to win any event at the World Series of Poker. When we see Tilly we fold like a cheap deck chair.
An offer she couldn't refuse
Bob Evans remains invincible. The former head of production at Paramount, who shepherded The Godfather and Chinatown before crashing druggily in the early 1980s, has just signed a three-year production deal with his old studio. Meanwhile Cindy Adams, the veteran New York Post gossip columnist, has suggested that Evans may be about to marry his current squeeze, Lady Victoria White. It would be Evans's seventh trip up the aisle. Reel News can confirm this Victoria White is not the same one who recently ceased to be arts editor of The Irish Times.
