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REEL DEALS Other J. Lo news: she's on track to star in ''The Chambermaid,'' in a part to which Hilary Swank was once attached. It's a Cinderella story, scripted by John Hughes, about a chambermaid in a Chicago luxury hotel who falls in love with a guest, a British gentleman. Wayne Wang (''The Center of the World,'' ''The Joy Luck Club'') is in talks to direct the movie, which will go before the cameras next spring....
Miramax has picked up the film rights to British novelist Andy McNab's ''Crisis Four,'' in which Osama bin Laden plots to blow up the White House. Both the studio and the author were quick to say they were not trying to exploit the recent tragedy, with McNab noting that he wrote the book in 1999, and Miramax claiming it had been negotiating with McNab for a year and had concluded the deal in July. ''I am not jumping on the bandwagon. This is not taking advantage of anything,'' McNab told Reuters....
Glenn Close, Patrick Dempsey (''Scream 3'') and Josh Lucas (''The Deep End'') may join Reese Witherspoon in ''Sweet Home Alabama,'' set to start shooting this month. Witherspoon will play a Holly Golightly-like young woman who leaves behind her small-town husband (which would be Lucas' role) for New York, where she becomes a socialite and finds a new boyfriend (Dempsey). It's not clear what role Close would play. Andy Tennant (''Ever After'') is directing....
''Ali,'' Michael Mann's biopic of Muhammad Ali, starring Will Smith, is emulating its subject's rope-a-dope strategy and waiting for the competition to play itself out. It's moving from its original December 7 release date, when it would have had to fight for viewers with ''Ocean's 11,'' to December 25. Besides, Christmas Day has long been a release date associated with movie violence, from ''The Godfather Part III'' (released December 25, 1990) to ''Trespass'' (Christmas, 1992), to ''Tombstone'' (1993), to ''An American Werewolf in Paris'' (1997), to ''Play It to the Bone'' (1999).
