It's a busy deal day in Hollywood, with lots of ink hitting paper in an effort to get projects off the ground before the WGA strike deadline hits next week.
First, Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) has signed to star in a remake of the 1978 Australian suspense thriller, Long Weekend, about a young couple whose camping trip gets turned upside down when the animals--not appreciating being shot at--decide to strike back. Sounds kind of like a low-budget slasher flick to us, but Caviezel seems to take his work seriously, so who knows?
Dakota AND Elle Fanning will be joining Cameron Diaz in My Sister's Keeper, about a girl (Elle) who tries to get emancipated from her parents when she finds out she was conceived as a genetic match to save her cancer-stricken sister (Dakota). It's the first time the sisters will play opposite each other in a movie.
Jamie Foxx has added yet another movie to his plate with The Zebra Murders: A Season of Killing, Racial Madness, and Civil Rights. He will play a police detective that cracked racially-motivated serial murders in 1970s San Francisco and fought racism in his own department. It is based on the 2006 book of the same, very long, name.
Michael Mann and Robert De Niro will try to recreate their fire from Heat with another book adapation for the screen. Mann will direct and De Niro will star in Frankie Machine, a drama based on Don Winslow's novel, The Winter of Frankie Machine. De Niro decided to break his mobster-role retirement to play Frank Machianno, aka 'Frankie Machine,' a retired mob hitman who gets sucked 
back in when he finds out there's a hit out on him.
And finally, Mann and De Niro aren't the only superstar movie reunion. Ron Howard and Tom Hanks will get the band back together to make Angels & Demons. Howard will direct and Hanks will reprise his role as Robert Langdon, the symbologist sleuth from The Da Vinci Code in this sequel--once again based on a Dan Brown novel.
Source: Variety.