Special Coverage 2008 Fall Movie PreviewThe Must List2008 Fall TV PreviewSound Bites
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REEL DEALS He'll be back. So it appears, anyway, with reports that ''Terminator 3'' is finally getting off the ground. Production company Intermedia is shopping the project around to the studios, with competition heated even though, at $170 million, it would be the most expensive picture ever greenlit. But it would have the legs of the ''Terminator'' franchise'' (which has grossed $560 million) and Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose salary would be an unprecedented $30 million. It would not, however, have James Cameron (''U-571'''s Jonathan Mostow is attached to direct) or Linda Hamilton. The screenplay has hero John Connor, now in his 20s, and cyborg pal Ah-nuld fighting a female cyborg....

If ''Charlie's Angels'' star and coproducer Drew Barrymore wants to see Cameron Diaz wiggle around in her Underoos again for the sequel, she may have to cough up as much as $20 million. That's Diaz's reported asking price for the deal, which would make her only the second actress (after Julia Roberts) to earn such a salary. Producers of the ''Shrek'' sequel are getting her comparatively cheaply, for just $10 million (also the salary of costars Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy), but that's still a pretty decent payday for what amounts to just a week of voice work.

Diaz's ex, Matt Dillon, will star in ''Tough Guy: The Eddie Maloney Story.'' It's an adaptation of Maloney's own memoir about his career as a mob hitman, which really took off when he started kidnapping and ransoming Mafia bosses. ''It's hard to believe he's still alive after all that he's been through,'' Dillon says....

''You Can Count on Me'' writer/director Kenneth Lonergan will make a movie about a bunch of guys who count on each other, the Knights of the Round Table. Lonergan is adapting T.H. White's novel ''The Once and Future King,'' which was previously the basis for the Disney animated movie ''The Sword in the Stone.''...

''Slums of Beverly Hills'' writer/director Tamara Jenkins will shoot a biopic about influential photographer Diane Arbus. She adapted the screenplay from Patricia Bosworth's book ''Diane Arbus: A Biography,'' a property whose film rights Barbra Streisand had optioned but allowed to lapse.


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