Blanchett tapped for lead in Indian Summer

The actress Cate Blanchett will play Lady Edwina Mountbatten in The Working Title production Indian Summer.

Rumours that Cate Blanchett will play the lead in Working Title's upcoming epic Indian Summer have been confirmed. She will play Lady Edwina Mountbatten in the film about the British handover of power ahead of Indian independence in 1948. Meanwhile, rumours have emerged that Working Title is to make a third instalment of the Bridget Jones's Diary franchise starring Renee Zellweger. Aiming to begin production next year, the new movie will be based on a column that the book's author, Helen Fielding, wrote for a British newspaper about an older woman attempting to have a baby.

Natalie Portman has been hired by the comic book heavyweights Marvel Studios for an upcoming big-screen version of Thor, according to www.screendaily.com. Kenneth Branagh will direct this early comic book adaptation about a Norse warrior from the mythical realm of Asgard who is sent to earth following a spell of bad behaviour. Portman plays a nurse who becomes Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) first love. The film will shoot next year and Paramount has scheduled a May 2011 release.

Hugh Jackman is to star in a film inspired by the demise of the US car industry, a comedy entitled Avon Man. According to Variety, the new project for 20th Century Fox follows a group of men made redundant from a car dealership, one of whom is recruited as a make-up salesman for Avon. He sets out to recruit first his family and then the town into the make-up business in a film that is described as a comedy in the vein of the British film The Full Monty.

Emily Blunt will star with Matt Damon in an adaptation of the Philip K Dick story The Adjustment Bureau, The Hollywood Reporter writes. George Nolfi is directing for Universal and Media Rights Capital from his own screenplay. Blunt will play a ballet dancer who meets a politician on the rise. Blunt can next be seen in the Universal film The Wolf Man in November, and is also working on Fox's Gulliver's Travels with Jack Black.

The Korean film industry is experimenting with the simultaneous release of feature films in theatres and online, according to The Hollywood Reporter Asia. The local distributor Kino Eye is scheduled to play nine independent films in a theatre while the IPTV service myLGtv launched the films online today. The idea is to make independent films more widely available in Korea.

The Chinese government has asked the Melbourne International Film Festival to drop a film about an Uyghur businesswoman accused of inciting major race riots this month. The 10 Conditions of Love follows Rebiya Kadeer and her activist husband, Sidik Rouzi (and the impact on their 11 children), following a push for more autonomy for China's 10 million Uyghurs. The Chinese government has accused Kadeer's World Uyghur Congress of being a front for extremist militants.

Warner Bros and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way are making progress with a feature film adaptation of the hit television series The Twilight Zone. The partners have hired Rand Ravich to write a script based on the original series, which ran for five seasons starting in 1959 on CBS. Warner Bros released a previous film version of the series in 1983 called Twilight Zone: The Movie, Variety reports.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, has become the biggest release in China of all time. The previous record holder, Titanic, made $52 million (Dh191m). Revenge of the Fallen has taken $58 million (Dh213m) to date. Meanwhile, the Chinese box office was up 43 per cent in the first half of this year, taking in $336 million(Dh1.2 trillion) in mainland China. The figure puts China on track to returns of between $732 and $805 million (Dh2.7 and Dh3 trillion) at the box office in 2009.