Hm. Noted crazy Mel Gibson will star in the film The Beaver for noted lesbian Jodie Foster, who will direct and co-star. The film, once thought to be a project for Steve Carell, is about a man who finds comfort in a beaver hand puppet. So it'll be a cheapish quirky indie type affair, although it will star one of the most vociferously strange movie stars of the past twenty years. Could be great! Could be awful. [Variety]

The Green Lantern is nearing the end of its major casting process, mulling over three actors for the lead role of a hotshot Air Force pilot who meets a dying alien and gets deputized into a space police department. (That is an actual plot of a movie. And a comic book!) Warner Brothers is trying to decide between Bradley Cooper, Ryan Reynolds, and Justin Timberlake, of all people, but is apparently having some trouble reconciling their favorite with the director's. So we'll either get a kind of boring Green Lanternt, a wise-cracking kind of annoying Green Lantern, or a singin' dancin' Green Lantern. None of which sound terribly thrilling. [THR]

The Minnie Driver/Uma Thurman comedy Motherhood, which premiered at Sundance this year, has set an October release date. The movie is about a crazed mommy trying to plan a birthday party for her daughter while the crazy city world provides obstacles along the way. Obstacles like Isn't This Basically the Plot of Jingle All the Way and Uma Thurman Is Never Funny. [Variety]

Quirky comedy queen Zooey Deschanel has signed on to play James Franco's love interest in the David Gordon Green comedy Your Highness, about a lazy prince (Danny McBride) who must go on a quest to save his kingdom. Other than the fact that Natalie Portman plays McBride's wildly disproportionate love interest, this film is weird because it looks as though Gordon Green really is going down this broad comedy route. Will we ever get a George Washington, All the Real Girls, or Snow Angels again? [THR]

Nicole Kidman will star in and produce a movie version of the book Little Bee, about a wealthy British couple who has an encounter with a Nigerian orphan while on an African vacation. No word yet on whether Jerry Seinfeld will voice the orphan character. [Variety]

Everwood surly teen Gregory Smith has joined the cast of that Canadian Grey's Anatomy-with-badges police drama Copper that will air on ABC in the States. Treat Williams is wondering if maybe there's a part for a tough-but-principled chief or something. [THR]

Ugh. Shoulda-been-gone-by-now Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder has landed a Comedy Central sitcom. It's about a laid-off IT worker who leaves his urban life to return home to the small town where he grew up. Which has been the idea for basically everything these days. In a nifty little distribution deal, if the sitcom's first batch of episodes do well, an automatic 90 more will be ordered. Yeesh. [Variety]

Steve Carell will star in another sadsack man comedy. This one is called Dumped and is about a man who is... dumped. [Variety] Kevin Spacey will star in and produce a new indie comedy called Father of Invention, about a crazy inventor's fall from grace and subsequent comeback. A man whose biggest credit is directing a Larry the Cable Guy movie will helm. [Variety]

O.C. and Gossip Girl blunderkind Josh Schwartz will be making his directorial film debut with an adaptation of Jay McInerney's landmark 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City. There was a Michael J. Fox movie based on the book made about twenty years ago, but... oh well. Schwartz's Lt. Riker, Stephanie Savage, will co-produce. [Variety] Pineapple Express buddies James Franco and Danny McBride will team up again for a new comedy, also to be directed by art-house auteur turned sly comedian, David Gordon Green. It's set in medieval times. Its title? Your Highness. Sigh. [Variety]

AMC, flush with successes Mad Men and Breaking Bad, is now turning itself into a regular old TV network. By developing reality programming! They've got a show called True West in the works. No, it's not about a production of the Sam Shepard play. It's about modern-day cowboys navigating the terrain as their industry fades. Sounds like a riot. [Variety] Fox, meanwhile, has rehired Wanda Sykes to host a Saturday night talk show. It'll sort of be a panel series, like the Bill Maher show. Hmm. [Variety]

SAG and AFTRA signed off on a three year commercials contract early this morning. The agreement includes a $36 million increase in wage rates and a $21 increase in contributions toward both guilds' health plans. [THR]

Kevin Rahm, who you'd recognize from a bunch of stuff, Rob Huebel, who you'd recognize from Human Giant, and Alison Brie, who you'd recognize as Pete's wife on Mad Men, have all landed TV pilots. Sadly, none of them sound good. [THR] Veteran CNN producer Kathy O'Hearn will be teaming up with veteran correspondent Christiane Amanpour for a new half-hour news program for the network. [THR]

And The Simpsons will be immortalized in postage stamp form, the Postal Service (the government thing, not the band) announced today. They'll be unveiled next week, timed well with the series' 20th anniversary. Sheesh. [THR]

After the jump: David Gordon Green gets animated, Robert Duvall ponies up and Ellen Burstyn does serious drugs with Tim Robbins.

· Finally, at age 77, Robert Duvall is bravely venturing into the uncharted career territory of Westerns, attaching himself to star in an untitled drama about the Pony Express. From AMC, of course, which makes him a likely Emmy front-runner in 2010. [Variety]
· Talk about dodging a bullet: By going straight to TV with his animated Fox surfer comedy Good Vibes, a relieved David Gordon Green won't be forced to follow Matthew McConaughey's recent beachgoing high-water mark Surfer, Dude. [Variety]
· Jesse Ventura's predictable career arc will continue ever-skyward when he hosts an untitled "conspiracy theory" reality show for truTV, in which the ex-wrestler/actor/politico will "hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces." Or, as they call it in Minnesota, running for reelection. [AP]
· Ellen Burstyn will join fellow Oscar-winner Tim Robbins for his Showtime pilot Possible Side Effects, a drama set in the pharmaceutical industry — kind of like Mad Men, but with scores of exquisitely photographed pills in the place of cigarettes. [Variety]

But we're not here to cast aspersions, we're just here to handicap. As such, read on for your irregularly occurring guide to the latest in retreads — and their varying chances for winning us over.

THE TITLE: Suspiria
THE ORIGINAL: Dario Argento's 1977 giallo classic planted nubile Jessica Harper in the middle of a ballet academy-cum-witch's coven. Vivid, over-the-top bloodshed ensues.
THE REMAKE: Having long expressed interest in a remake, David Gordon Green is reportedly set to follow Pineapple Express with Suspiria — featuring Natalie Portman as his lead. She would produce as well.
APPEAL: Strong. Face it — for all its inspired demises and influence, Argento's original doesn't age well. It's saturated from eye to ear with genre cheese that could benefit from a modern reimagining with real cinematography (by Green's brilliant regular lenser Tim Orr, we presume) and a less-manufactured sense of peril. Only downside: Can it compete with the horror of Portman's real-life love interest?

THE TITLE: The Conversation
THE ORIGINAL: Between the first two Godfather films, Francis Ford Coppola knocked out this extraordinary drama about a surveillance expert (Gene Hackman) paranoiacally ensnared in a murder plot.
THE REMAKE: Oscar-winning Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie is on board an AMC TV series with producer Tom Krantz, who has been trying to develop the show for a decade.
APPEAL: Zero. Krantz tells Variety that "[t]he issues of privacy and individuality, and issues of spying and listening, are as relevant now as they've ever been. This is the perfect vehicle to tell those stories." Exactly — which is why you broadcast the timeless original on AMC as opposed to embarrass yourself attempting to keep up. Coppola is behind it, though; there's only so much wine he can sell, evidently, to subsidize his nonsense.

THE TITLE: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
THE ORIGINAL: Russ Meyer's 1965 saga set the enduring standard for busty-stripper murder rampages.
THE REMAKE: Quentin Tarantino, who already did sex-kitten speed-demonry in Death Proof, wants you to pay for a variation on himself and Meyer. Starring Britney Spears. Sigh.
APPEAL:: Sigh. It's a little easier to swallow once you remember how well the guy's always done without ever conceiving an original idea. But is this really news, or is he just hedging lest Inglorious Bastards' hype proves unsustainable? After all, the Spears/Mendes/Kardashian rumor mill has been churning since January. This whole mess screams, "Just in case." That said, we've heard worse. (See The Conversation)

THE TITLE: "French thriller Tell No One a word-of-mouth hit"
THE ORIGINAL: An Aug. 1 enterprise story by Steven Zeitchik of The Hollywood Reporter, spotlighting what has become the art-house sleeper hit of summer.
THE REMAKE: An Aug. 7 enterprise story by John Horn of the LA Times, spotlighting what has become the art-house sleeper hit of summer.
APPEAL:: Flatlining. Happy as we are to see Tell No One's out-of-the-blue indie traction, Horn's second head-slapper in as many days has us fearing he may need more direct supervision at the Times. At least yesterday's baseless piece "Wednesday is the new Friday in movie releases" was an original. Try harder, John — your paper needs you.