stuff
A Leo Tolstoy biopic, The Last Station, will star Christopher Plummer as the Russian writer and intellectual, and Helen Mirren as his wife Sofia. Directed by Michael Hoffman's (The Emperor's Club), the film also features Paul Giamatti as Vladimir Chertkov, James McAvoy as a naive young secretary to Tolstoy, and Anne-Marie Duff as Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra "Sasha" Tolstaya. (Coming Soon) [imdb]
Matt Damon returns to black comedy in Steven Soderbergh's The Informant, which will also star comedic actors Joel McHale and Scott Bakula as FBI agents working with agri-business insider Mark Whitacre (Damon) to stop a price-fixing scam. Film is based on the book by journalist Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant: A True Story. (Hollywood Reporter) [imdb]
Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) has signed on to develop and direct the first novel in Philip Reeve's Larklight trilogy. Set in a Victorian-era alternate universe in which mankind has been exploring the solar system since the time of Isaac Newton, the story revolves around a brother and sister who team with a band of renegade space pirates to save the world from destruction at the hands of a madman. (Hollywood Reporter)
An early promotional image for Alejandro Amenábar's historical drama set in Roman Egypt, Agora, which will star Rachel Weisz (as Hypatia of Alexandria) and Max Minghella. [imdb]