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Lin Manuel Miranda takes ‘In the Heights’ to the big screen

Flush from the global returns of “Mamma Mia!,” Universal Pictures is tuning up another stage musical transformation. The studio has acquired rights to turn the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “In the Heights” into a feature.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the musical, wrote the lyrics and music and has played the starring role through its Off Broadway and Broadway runs, is expected to reprise his role in the film. Miranda will produce with Meryl Poster.

Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the book for the show, will pen the screen adaptation.

The tuner takes place over three days in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, where a bodega owner (played by Manuel) inherits his late grandmother’s lottery winnings and plans to shutter his store and retire on a beach in the Dominican Republic. Trying to say farewell to the characters who live on the block, he realizes that his neighbors are his real family, and he’s torn about leaving.

Original Broadway producers Kevin McCollum, Jeffrey Seller and Jill Furman will be executive producers of the film.

“In the Heights” launched Off Broadway in early 2007 and moved to Broadway, where it won four Tonys, including musical.

“It is a timeless Everyman story that has a universal appeal,” said Poster who, as an executive at Miramax Films, supervised and exec produced “Chicago.” “In the Heights” is the first feature she has set up under her first-look deal for TV and movie projects with NBC Universal.

U, which has watched “Mamma Mia!” become the highest-grossing musical in history with $558.8 million worldwide, now has another tuner on the boards. The studio and producer Marc Platt are also in the nascent stages of turning the Broadway hit “Wicked” into a feature.

Steven Spielberg and Will Smith to remake ‘Old Boy’

Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are in early discussions to collaborate on a remake of Chan Wook-park‘s “Oldboy.” DreamWorks is in the process of securing the remake rights, and the new pic will be distributed by Universal.

In the 2003 Korean original, a man gets kidnapped and held in a shabby cell for 15 years without explanation. Suddenly, he’s released and given money, a cell phone and clothes and is set on a path to discover who destroyed his life so he can take revenge.

Spielberg had been looking for an opportunity to make a film with Smith, who would play the kidnapped man if all the pieces fall into place. Spielberg is looking for a writer to begin the development process.

The film was originally set at U and then found its way to Mandate.

Spielberg is next expected to direct “Tintin.”

Antonio Banderas to play Salvador Dali?

Antonio Banderas is in final negotiations to play Salvador Dali in the Simon West-helmed indie biopic “Dali.”

Media 8 Entertainment (“Monster”) is producing alongside West’s shingle, which has been developing the project since 2003, when West optioned the feature film rights to Jeremy Walters’ spec script for low- to mid-six figures.

Film will blend music with CGI sequences in an effort to capture the inventiveness and color of the painter. Story will explore how Dali conquered America and the world with sex, sin and surrealism only to succumb later to worldwide scandal and misfortune.

At least two other Dali biopics are in the works: Al Pacino is attached to play the artist in “Dali & I: The Surreal Story,” with Andrew Niccol directing; and “Twilight’s” Robert Pattinson stars as Dali in the upcoming “Little Ashes,” which chronicles the young life and loves of the painter as well as filmmaker Luis Bunuel and writer Federico Garcia Lorca.

West is producing “Dali” alongside Jib Polhemus (“Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”). Media 8 is handling worldwide sales, with pre-sales beginning this week at the American Film Market.

Media 8 has already sold the film in Eastern Europe to Revolutionary Releasing, which is comprised of some of the territory’s leading companies, including Monolith, Blitz, Bonton, Forum and MediaPro.

West added that the project will focus not only on Dali’s outrageous lifestyle but his lifelong love affair with Gala, his wife, muse and manipulative manager.

Shooting is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2009 in Spain and England. The film will be an international co-production.

Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, is dead

Prolific novelist and “ER” creator Michael Crichton has passed away. He was 66.

Perhaps best known for being the author of Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World, which were turned into a hugely successful movie franchise, his numerous books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide.

In what his family calls an unexpected death, it was revealed that he was waging a private battle against cancer.

“While the world knew him as a great storyteller that challenged our preconceived notions about the world around us — and entertained us all while doing so — his wife Sherri, daughter Taylor, family and friends knew Michael Crichton as a devoted husband, loving father and generous friend who inspired each of us to strive to see the wonders of our world through new eyes,” his family tells ET. “He did this with a wry sense of humor that those who were privileged to know him personally will never forget.”

Michelle Rodriguez films in the Dominican Republic

Notorious Hollywood actress Michelle Rodríguez goes back to her Dominican and Puerto Rican roots to film ‘Tropicos de Sangre’ (Tropical Blood) in the Dominican Republic. The story, based on the true story, revolves around the death of the three Mirabal sisters. Filming begins in November, in different localities of the country. Rodríguez is immersed in merengue classes, spanish dictionin preparation for the role.

“When I got the offer to be a part of this project, I thrusted myself in it 100% and saw it as a great challenge in my career”.

“Understanding the importance that this story marked in the history of the Dominican’s democracy and the world is important to me”, Rodríguez added. Together with Juan De Láncer, the director of the movie, Michelle has been visiting the the locations where it will be filmed. Some of the other stars are César Evora as Antonio de la Maza and Juan Fernandez as Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, both stand-out local actors.

‘High School Musical 3’ frights up a consecutive #1!

Tom Ford as a film director?

Fashion designer Tom Ford is getting the cast in place for his long-awaited move into movies.

Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode are set to star in “A Single Man,” Ford’s adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood novel.

Published in 1964, the novel centers on a gay man who, after the sudden death of his partner, is determined to persist in his usual routine, which is seen in the span of a single, ordinary day in southern California.

Firth is the gay man, an Englishman and professor who feels like an outsider in Los Angeles. Goode is the boyfriend who dies in a car accident and appears in flashbacks. Moore plays a friend of the professor.

Ford, who was recently ranked 12th in a list of the 49 men who most influenced the way other men thought, behaved and shopped, adapted the screenplay for the independently financed project with David Scearce.

Ford rose to the top of the fashion world with a 10-year run at Gucci, a period that turned around the fortunes of the Italian fashion house owned by France’s PPR (PRTP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

He stepped down in 2004 following a failure to agree contract terms and in 2005 set up his own design line with up-market stores now in New York and Milan and planned for over a dozen locations including London, Los Angeles, and Dubai.

One of Ford’s well-advertised customer is Daniel Craig who wears Tom Ford outfits in the new James Bond movie “Quantum of Solace.”

After leaving Gucci, Ford also signed on with Creative Artists Agency with the aim to slide into the director’s chair.

Firth was last seen in “Mamma Mia!” and Moore in “Blindness.” Goode plays Ozymandias in next year’s “Watchmen.”

"Spidey 4" has a new screenwriter

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire got out of a rabbit hole, only to be ensnared by a spider’s web.

Lindsay-Abaire, who won a Pulitzer in 2007 for his drama “Rabbit Hole,” is in final negotiations to write “Spider-Man 4” for Columbia.

Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire are back as director and star, respectively. Kirsten Dunst also is expected to return for the latest movie featuring the Marvel Comics character.

Plot details are under lock and key. Producer Laura Ziskin had said she would like to aim for a May 2011 release for “Spider-Man 4,” nine years after the original movie’s debut.

Columbia always has gone off the beaten path during the development process when hiring writers for the “Spider-Man” movies. Alvin Sargent, a veteran scribe best known for 1973’s “Paper Moon” and 1980’s “Ordinary People,” served as a writer on the second and third films. Michael Chabon, another Pulitzer winner, also worked on “Spider-Man 2.”

James Vanderbilt previously wrote a draft of “Spider-Man 4.”

Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole,” which starred Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, hit the Broadway stage in 2006 and won four Tonys, including best play. The writer also is known for the play “Fuddy Meers.”

Lindsay-Abaire has said in interviews that his plays tend to be “peopled with outsiders in search of clarity,” which would put his work on sympathetic terms with Peter Parker, who in his classic incarnation is the perpetual outsider.

The choice of scribe also signals that that filmmakers are intent to focus on character, something that critics said got lost in the third installment.

Lindsay-Abaire, now writing the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical adaptation of “Shrek,” has dipped his toe in Tinseltown before, with his adaptation of “Inkheart” due in January. He is also adapting “Rabbit” for 20th Century Fox and Nicole Kidman.