Bruce Willis heads back to action-comedy

CASTING Bruce Willis will be rediscovering his inner smirk: He’s signed on to ”Outlaws,” an action-comedy about two bank robbers who both fall in love with their kidnappee…. The thinking man’s teen star, Seth Green, will make his bones in a new Nickelodeon series, ”100 Deeds of Eddie McDowd,” providing the voice of a bully who is turned into a dog until he can perform 100 kind acts to make up for his wedgie-giving ways…. Patrick Stewart will be setting his six gun to stun for the Western ”Winding Stair,” in which he’ll play part of a rainbow-coalition posse (a German marshal, two Native Americans, and a black sheriff) solving a crime in the 1850s. As part of his development deal with Paramount, Stewart will produce the film. He’s also putting together a remake of 1969’s ”The Assassination Bureau,” although he won’t act in that one.

POKING FUN The Internet helped make ”The Blair Witch Project” a hit, and now the Net will help make it a mockery. Trimark Pictures has bought the rights to many of the short ”Blair Witch” spoofs that have been circulating around L.A. (”The Blonde Witch Project,” ”The Watts Bitch Project,” etc.), and the studio will be posting them on its new site CinemaNow that will be launched at the end of this month. There are also plans to release the parodies on a compilation video.

AILING Barenaked Ladies‘ keyboardist Kevin Hearn has suffered a relapse in his struggle with leukemia, according to LAUNCH.com. Hearn had rejoined the band for their spring and summer tour after taking a year off for treatment, but last week he fell ill again and returned to Toronto for treatment. The Ladies’ North American tour was nearly over, and Greg Kurstin from Geggy Tah will fill in for the last dates this weekend in Detroit.

CONCERT BUST Talk about your summer bummers: A July 28 Beach Boys benefit concert to aid American Legion baseball (a summer league for high schoolers) actually lost $10,000. Only 3,000 people attended the North Platte, Neb., show, which cost $60,000 and grossed only $50,000. An organizer blamed the failure on insufficient promotion and the fact that it was held on a Wednesday, and a brutally hot one at that. Hope they got footage of it, because VH1 might pay big cash to use it as the perfect depressing end for an episode of ”Where Are They Now?”

LAWSUIT A veteran of the civil rights movement, Amelia Boynton Robinson, is suing Disney for $8 million for allegedly portraying her as a ”black Mammy” in the TV movie ”Selma, Lord, Selma” that aired in January, according to the Associated Press. For the production, which dramatized the height of the Martin Luther King era, she says that a character based on her was simplified to the point where all she did was sing spirituals and quote the Bible. ”It doesn’t bespeak the type of character my mother actually had at all,” says her son and lawyer, Bruce Boynton. ”Not only had but continues to have.” The AP says Disney did not return phone calls.