In many ways, Cleopatra was a woman ahead of her time. Through political machinations, she sought to secure her place in history, and if she could have seen into the future, she would have seen that her fame lived on, even if her empire did not. She would have also seen that she'll be getting the high-tech treatment as Steven Soderbergh plots to bring her story to the big screen. According to Variety, the director is planning to tell the story of Egypt's final pharaoah as a rock musical -- and it will be in 3-D. If she'd known this would some day be her fate, Cleo may have opted for a life of obscurity. [I think we're eight years beyond that. Have you seen Cleopatra 2525? - Zach]

How do you follow up a broad, slapsticky stoner action-comedy like Pineapple Express? Well, if you're director David Gordon Green, and your previous film was the intensely depressing small-town drama Snow Angels, you choose to adapt a somber, suspenseful comic-book tale of mutant freaks fleeing their murderous parents in the midwest. The comic book is Freaks of the Heartland, by 30 Days of Night writer Steve Niles and Conan and Matrix artist Greg Ruth, and you can think of it as a less-cheerful Goonies, although that's as bad a simile as anything, really.

After making thousands of references to Star Wars in his movies, Kevin Smith is finally putting his money where his mouth is: $50 million, to be precise. The geek-favorite director has finished the first draft of a screenplay for a science-fiction comedy film, and he's already shown it to Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who are interested in making it. The film would be Smith's most expensive to date, costing $45-50 million; that budget blows away his current film, the $25 million Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which has as its centerpiece a porno film based on... yes, you guessed it, Star Wars. Smith's sci-fi debut will also reference famous sci-fi films, but here's hoping that it's of the non-porn variety. (Think more Spaceballs and less Star Ballz.)

Those guys at The Daily Show have made their livings creating laughs out of very serious source material, and they're not about to be outdone by Seth Rogen. At least not yet. Just a week after Rogen's production company announced it was making a comedy about cancer titled I'm With Cancer, Miramax announced it is developing Daily Show head writer Ben Karlin and Stu Zicherman's movie about another painful topic: divorce.

Do you think cancer is funny? If so, you have something in common with Seth Rogen, who will produce (with his writing-producing partner Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin of The Daily Show) the autobiographical comedy I'm With Cancer. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rogen -- who will be seen later this month in what looks to be another as-offensive-as-it-is-funny movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- will also have a small role in the film.

Bill Murray still loves the ladies. While promoting City of Ember, the comedian told MTV that he was pulling for one of today's "funny girls" to join the squad in the new film, currently being penned by two writers from The Office. As long as the movie gets made, I don't care if one of the new 'Busters is an orangutan named Clyde, but a female proton packer would be a good idea. (For proof, look at Janine Melnitz in the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.) Sadly, it doesn't sound like Murray will be involved, but the fact that he's thinking about the movie at all is great.

Like much of the country commenting on the most recent Presidential debate, The Dark Knight screenwriter David Goyer is calling bullshit. Specifically on all the rumors swirling about Batman 3 (wouldn't that be Batman 3.2?). So, according to Goyer, that means:

- Christopher Nolan has not signed on.

- Pre-production will not start next year.

- Any and all of the casting rumors you've heard, from Cher or Angelina Jolie as Catwoman to Johnny Depp as the Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin, nothing you've heard is true. Furthermore, there hasn't yet been talk of villains for the next film, much less casting work.

George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford can ignore the (generous mixed reviews and Ford's age (66!), but they apparently cannot ignore Indy's box office power, and therefore a fifth Indiana Jones film might be on the way, according to Ford. He said Lucas is "in think mode" and, "It's crazy, but great." I would like to emphasize the word "crazy" here, but it sounds like Ford's going to focus on the "great."

In what appears to be the exception that proves the rule of the old saying "Don't put the cart before the horse," South African director Jonathan Liebesman is in the final stages of negotiations with Columbia Pictures to direct their upcoming project Battle: Los Angeles, which he won by going out to locations in August and not only shooting sequences and plates, but adding CGI aliens and creating a pre-viz alien invasion sequence just to pitch to the studio. Seems like a lot of money and work for a job he didn't even have yet.

What do you get when you take Jack Black, The Bourne Identity, and a couple of pretty talented comedy writers? About what you'd expect, really. The Hollywood Reporter announced today that Black was teaming up with Kung Fu Panda writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger for an untitled, live-action, action-comedy at Universal. Described as a comedic The Bourne Identity, the project, which was picked up as a pitch for a seven-figure deal, will see Black as an American who finds himself washed up the shores of Cuba with no idea of who he is and how he got there. He comes to the conclusion that he must be a superspy, though in reality he is far from one.