Father Geek here because its the weekend and time for me to post Elston's rehash of all the Tinseltown production news you may well have missed during the past work week.

Of course the really big news of the week is the sad report of the death of animation legend CHUCK JONES, Here's what the AP wire had on it...

Academy Award-winning animator Chuck Jones, who drew such beloved cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig, died at his home Friday. He was 89. Jones worked on more than 300 animated films in a career that spanned more than 60 years. Three of his films won Academy Awards and he was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1996 for lifetime achievement. He also received an honorary life membership from the Directors Guild of America.

Jones died of congestive heart failure at his home in the coastal community of Corona del Mar, according to a statement released by his daughter's company, Linda Jones Enterprises.

Working at Warner Bros., Jones helped bring to life some of the studio's most recognizable characters. In addition to Bugs and Daffy, he worked on the fast-moving, beep-beeping Road Runner and his hapless pursuer, Wile E. Coyote. He also drew Pepe le Pew, the romantic-minded skunk with a French accent. Jones also produced, directed and wrote the screenplay for the animated television classic ``Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.''

The animator's work won him admirers throughout the entertainment business. ``Chuck Jones' originality, his humor and his pacing still have no peer today,'' director Steven Spielberg once said.

Three of Jones' films won Academy Awards: ``Frigid Hare,'' ``So Much, So Little'' and ``The Dot and the Line,'' for which Jones also received a directing Oscar. One of Jones' most popular films, ``What's Opera, Doc?'' was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1992 for being ``among the most culturally, historically and aesthetically significant films of our time.''

Born in 1912 in Spokane, Wash., Jones moved to Hollywood with his family, finding work there as a child extra in Mac Sennett comedies. After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of Arts), he began making a living drawing pencil portraits on Olvera Street, a historic Los Angeles marketplace. He landed his first job washing animation cels in 1932, working for legendary Disney animator Ub Iwerks. A few years later, he became an animator at the Leon Schlesinger Studio, which was later sold to Warner Bros. He headed up his own unit at the Warner Bros. Animation Dept. until it closed in 1962. He also worked for MGM Studios, creating episodes for the ``Tom and Jerry'' cartoon series. Jones opened his own company, Chuck Jones Enterprises, in 1962, producing nine 30-minute animated films. His autobiography, ``Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist,'' was published in 1989, followed two years later by a second book, ``Chuck Reducks.''

This is not how I wanted to start the day. Call me Falcon-1.

Sad, Sad news... Now here's the regular...

WEEKLY RECAP...

TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Hey. Interesting news this week: LaBute, Jordan, Stone, Murray -- some stuff to look forward to.

CASTING

* Josh Lucas (A BEAUTIFUL MIND) joins Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott and Nick Nolte in THE HULK for director Ang Lee and Universal Pictures.

* Elijah Wood, Franka Potente and Mandy Moore will star in the romantic comedy TRY SEVENTEEN about a young man who heads for college and learns about life and love from the people in his apartment building. Shooting on the Millenium Films project begins in March. Jeffrey Porter will direct from a script by Charles Kephart.

* Jon Favreau is in talks to play Foggy Nelson in DAREDEVIL for writer/director Mark Steven Johnson and 20th Century Fox. Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner and Michael Clarke Duncan will star in the adaptation of the Marvel Comics franchise.

* Sigourney Weaver will star in HOLES, based on the Newbery Award-winning book by Louis Sachar, for director Andrew Davis (COLLATERAL DAMAGE) and Walden Media/Phoenix Pictures. Production starts in April. Weaver will play the warden of a juvenile detention facility where a young boy is sent after being falsely accused of stealing a pair of sneakers. Forced to dig holes to improve his character, he finds out he's being used in a plot to uncover a buried treasure.

* Mariah Carey will star in the indie drama SWEET SCIENCE about a determined boxing manager who drafts an unknown female boxer to make a name for them both. Gary Goldman, Stan Seidel and Rick Angres wrote the script.

* Sean Connery is in final talks to star in THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN for 20th Century Fox, based on the comic book by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Connery will play Allan Quatermain, who along with Mina Harker, the Invisible Man, Dr. Henry Jekyll, Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray and their American liaison, police detective Thomas Sawyer, have been assembled by Queen Victoria and the British Secret Service to stop a villain intent on turning the nations of the world against each other. Production begins this summer in the Czech Republic and Morocco.

* Billy Bob Thornton is attached to star in an adaptation of David Ambrose's novel COINCIDENCE for Artisan Pictures and his Stone Village Prods. The psychological thriller centers on an author who researches the phenomenon of coincidence and begins to experience a series of coincidences that lead to dramatic and potentially fatal results. This includes the discovery of an identical twin brother he was unaware of who happens to be a theif on the run and wants to kill the author and assume his identity.

* Mark Ruffalo is in talk to star opposite Meg Ryan in the erotic thriller IN THE CUT for director Jane Campion, based on the novel by Susanna Moore.

* Kristanna Loken (PANIC) will play the terminatrix who goes up against Arnold Schwarzenegger in TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES. Jonathan Mostow directs the pic which shoots this spring entirely in Los Angeles for a summer 2003 release.

* Bill Murray is in early talks to star in BAD SANTA for director Terry Zwigoff, producers Joel and Ethan Coen and Dimension Films. It's about a couple of con men who dress up like Santa and an elf, traveling to different malls each Christmas to rob the establishment. However, they meet a troubled 8-year-old who unintentionally reminds them of the true meaning of Christmas.

* Ben Kingsley will star in the indie crime drama ALL FOR NOTHIN' for director Predrag "Gaga" Antonijevic. Production begins in April on the project, based on the true story of telecommunications pioneer Walter L. Shaw and his son Walter T. Shaw, the "Dinner Time Burglar." As a young man, Walter T. Shaw witnessed his father go uncredited for his work and sought fame through a career in crime.

DIRECTOR/WRITER ATTACHMENTS

* U.K. commercial and music video helmer Vaughan Arnell will direct the action/thriller ROOFWORLD, adapted from the novel by Christopher Fowler, for Fine Line Features and Granada Film. It's about war among alternative communities that inhabit the rooftops of London and loathe the world below them. Ollie Blackburn penned the screenplay.

* Fox 2000 has grabbed J. Barton Mitchell's supernatural thriller script SILVER STRIKE for producers Mark Gordon and Trevor Albert. The project, which focuses on a group of werewolf hunters, is described as BLACK HAWK DOWN with werewolves.

* Don Cheadle will make his directorial debut on TISHOMINGO BLUES, based on the new Elmore Leonard novel, for Britain's Film Four. Cheadle may also play the villain. It's about a con artist from Detroit, who is trying to take over the Dixie mob's Gulf Coast drug business, and finds a way in thanks to a circus high diver who witnesses a murder. The story culminates in the reenactment of a famous Civil War battle.

* Indian filmmaker Ujjal Chattopadhyay is making ESCAPE FROM THE TALIBAN, a film based on the real-life story of a woman tortured and forcibly converted to Islam by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The project is being shot in English and Hindi at Mumbai studios and will be released in May.

* Neil Jordan will direct the historical drama BORGIA about the infamously corrupt Spanish Borgia family. The project will focus on the greed, ruthlessness and nepotism of the family under Pope Alexander VI and their running the 16th century Vatican as a crime syndicate. Eventuall, it tears them apart. Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey will produce through their Imagemovers shingle along with Stephen Woolley. Production may begin by late summer.

* Neil LaBute will write and direct VAPOR, based on the novel by Amanda Filipacchi, as a possible vehicle for Renee Zellweger. It's about an artist who makes clouds in buildings and the aspiring actress whom he trains. Shooting is slated to begin this fall in New York.

* Warner Bros. has grabbed the action/drama pitch RACE CAR KID from scribed Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman for Cosmic Entertainment to produce. The project is set in the intense junior leagues of NASCAR. Cosmic Entertainment is headed by Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson, each of whom has his or her own company underneath the Cosmic banner. RACE CAR KID will be a Cosmic production in conjunction with Oliver Hudson's Workshed Entertainment. The other companies under Cosmic include Hawn's Clearlight Prods., Russell's Go Mav Prods. and Kate Hudson's Birdie Prods. Cosmic also is developing the comedy LAST CALL at Disney with Barry Sonnenfeld attached to direct and Kate Hudson attached to star.

* Bille August will direct the noir thriller WITHOUT APPARENT MOTIVE, penned by Eric Blakeny (GUN SHY), for Splendid Pictures and YSA Prods. It's about a sheriff's detective and his search for the murderer of three high-profile L.A. businessmen. His ability to get inside the head of a serial killer takes him through a string of suspects that extends into the city's high society. Production will begin in the spring in Los Angeles.

* Nigel Cole (SAVING GRACE) will direct CALENDAR GIRLS, based on the true story of 12 middle-aged Yorkshire women who posed naked for a calendar to raise money for charity. The women were trying to raise funds for medical research, following the terminal illness of one of their husbands. Juliette Towhidi wrote the script.

* Oliver Stone is shooting LOOKING FOR FIDEL, a documentary on Fidel Castro with the president's reported cooperation, for Spain's MediaPro, Morena Films and Pentagrama Films. The project will include extensive interviews with Castro, including his views on Cuba, the world and his own life. The movie is set to get a theatrical release this fall in Spain.

* Oliver Stone is also set to direct Heath Ledger in ALEXANDER, a big-budget epic about Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, for executive producer Moritz Borman of Pacifica Film Development and Intermedia Films. Stone is working with Christopher Kyle (K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER) on a screenplay. Shooting begins Oct. 16 in India for a Christmas 2003 release.

* Robert Zemeckis will develop and produce with an eye to direct POLAR EXPRESS, based on the children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, for Castle Rock and Warner Bros. William Broyles (CAST AWAY) has written a treatment. Tom Hanks is attached to star and produce.

* Joe Camp will write and direct BENJI RETURNS: THE PROMISE OF CHRISTMAS for Myriad Pictures. The project is the latest in the Benji franchise and will center on the mutt challenging a misguided dogcatcher while struggling to provide Christmas to a couple of poverty-stricken children. . Shooting is expected to begin in April in Canada.

* Mike Newell will develop and direct THE UNTITLED JOHN MILIUS WESTERN PROJECT for Catch 23 Entertainment and producer Adam Fields. It's an epic about a half-Apache bounty hunter who sets out to capture the last great renegade Apache Indian. Newell is working with writer-director Milius on a rewrite.

* Brazilian director Walter Salles (CENTRAL STATION, BEHIND THE SUN) will next direct THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, the Che Guevara biopic. The film will recount the journey of Guevara, who was then a medical student but would become a charismatic and controversial political revolutionary. With his friend Alberto Granado, Guevara traveled the South American continent on a personal odyssey in the early 1950s. Playwright Jose Rivera wrote the script, adapted from journals by Guevara and Granado. The Spanish-language project is expected to begin production in the fall.

* Christian De Sica and Graziano Diana have written the screenplay LA PORTA DEL CIELO (THE DOOR TO HEAVEN) which Miramax will finance and produce. It's the true story of the unorthodox shooting of Vittorio De Sica's -- Christian's father -- religious-themed film of the same name during World War II. The younger De Sica will also play his father in the project. Shooting is expected to start next year in Rome.

* Damian Shannon and Mark Swift will develop a script based on the video game STATE OF EMERGENCY for New Line Cinema. The game is set in a future in which social and economic chaos has left a city in the hands of a monolithic corporation that only a few resistance fighters attempt to confront.

* Gary Scott Thompson (THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS) will write for Universal Pictures a script featuring skateboarder Tony Hawk. Thompson and Hawk will use facets of the skateboarder's life to create a tough, fictional look at the counterculture world Hawk grew up in, long before he became a skateboarding superstar. It's being described as BOOGIE NIGHTS meets THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS.

* Paramount has nabbed the comedy THE NEW FOON, scripted by Chris Ord and Matt Corman, about a magician who goes into rehab and is replaced by a look-alike. Jack Black may star in and produce the project.

* Hossein Amini (THE WINGS OF THE DOVE) has rewritten the World War II pic THE GREAT RAID, based on the book by William B. Breuer, for Miramax. Production is slated for April. It's about an Army lieutenant in the Phillippines who sets out to liberate 500 American prisoners from a Japanese POW camp. Benjamin Bratt is attached to star. Amini will also adapt the Leon Uris novel MILA 18 about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

* Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (SHREK) will develop the thriller SHADOWPLAY for Digital Domain. It's about the relationship between a young man and his shadow. Shawn Riopelle is writing the script.

MISCELLANEOUS PRODUCTION TIDBITS

* Disney is developing THE JUNGLE BOOK II and PIGLET'S BIG MOVIE through it's Walt Disney Television Animation, though a theatrical or straight-to-video release is yet to be determined. Many Disney projects are being developed as direct-to-video releases, but some may see a theatrical premiere a la RETURN TO NEVERLAND.

* Crystal Sky has purchased the rights to make a feature film version of the successful video game franchise TEKKEN, in association with Japan's Gaga Communications and the game's maker, Namco.

* DreamWorks is in final talks to purchase the English-language remake rights to I.M. Pictures' Korean romantic comedy MY SASSY GIRL for Maverick Films to produce. It's about a guy and girl who date and break up without having had any sexual contact together. As a condition of their breakup, they agree to write love letters to each other expressing how passionately they feel for each other and seal them up in a time capsule agreeing to meet and read each other's letters in two years. If they both feel the same way, they will get back together. Two years later, he arrives, but she never shows. He opens both letters and finds an unexpected surprise.

Until next week...

Elston Gunn

elstongunn@hotmail.com