The Big Chili

John Travolta, whose career has been a little chilly of late, may get to reheat it with some Chili. As in Chili Palmer, the serene mob enforcer-turned-Hollywood producer he played in the 1995 crime comedy hit ''Get Shorty.'' Variety reports that he's in talks with MGM and producer Danny DeVito to reprise the role in ''Be Cool,'' based on novelist Elmore Leonard's ''Shorty'' sequel.

In ''Be Cool,'' Palmer shifts gears and tries his hand at becoming a music producer and grooms a young pop hopeful, only to learn that the Russian Mafia wants to make the singer No. 1 with a bullet. Variety reports that producers would like Brett Ratner to direct, though MGM would have to get in line behind New Line, which would like the now-''Superman''-free director to make his third ''Rush Hour'' movie.

Meanwhile, Travolta already has summer plans to play another gangster who becomes a respectable bigshot, villain Howard Saint in the comic-book adaptation ''The Punisher.'' Plus, Paramount also wants him to revisit an old hit and don his T-Birds jacket again for a ''Grease: The Next Generation''-type sequel in which he and Olivia Newton-John and the rest of the Rydell High alumni would play parents of a new gang of singing teens during the disco era.

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