Winslet, DiCaprio to reunite for DreamWorks

Titanic stars reunite for DreamWorks
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio will star together for the first time since 1997’s Titanic in DreamWorks’ Revolutionary Road. The Sam Mendes-directed movie will be based on the Richard Yates’s 1961 novel about post-war disillusionment seen through the eyes of a suburban couple raising two children in the mid-1950s who find their true desires obstructed by pressure to conform. Writer Justin Haythe adapted the screenplay. John N. Hart, Scott Rudin, Bobby Cohen, and Mendes (Winslet’s husband) will produce in association with BBC Films. Shooting is slated to begin this summer. (Variety)

News Corp., NBC Universal pair for video Web portal
News Corp. and NBC Universal announced that they have partnered to launch a new Web portal that will feature video from the two companies’ properties. It is scheduled to launch some time this summer. Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, Microsoft Corp., News Corp.’s MySpace, and Yahoo Inc. are on board to distribute the service to their users via their own embedded video player. The portal will have thousands of hours of video content, including shows Heroes, 24, House and My Name Is Earl and movies Borat, Little Miss Sunshine and The Devil Wears Prada. Fox’s American Idol will not be featured on the new portal, as its online rights belong to FremantleMedia. New original Idol content may be created for the portal at a later date, however. The companies said they plan on trying to establish partnerships with content providers outside of the NBC, News Corp. families as well. (Hollywood Reporter)

Sony Classics sets fall release for new Coppola movie
Sony Pictures Classics has acquired North American distribution rights to Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth and has planned a late fall release. It is the director’s first movie since 1997’s Rainmaker. Coppola wrote, directed, and produced the movie, adapting a novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. Tim Roth stars in the World War II-set story as an elderly professor whose apparent immortality makes him a target for the Nazis. (Hollywood Reporter)

Olmos directing movie about U.S.-Mexico border issues
Edward James Olmos is set to direct a bilingual drama based on Carlos Fuentes’ novel The Crystal Frontier, which explores the political, sociological, and economic impact of the U.S. and Mexico border dispute through nine intertwined stories. Olmos said he will likely act in the movie as well. He plans to start shooting in August and has targeted a spring 2008 release. (Hollywood Reporter)

Paramount hires writer for Spielberg project
Paramount has picked Jonah Nolan to write Interstellar, the Stephen Spielberg-directed movie about explorers who travel through a wormhole into another dimension. Noaln wrote the short story that became his brother Chris Nolan’s Memento, as well as The Prestige and The Dark Knight. He will begin work on Interstellar after he finishes writing The Chicago Fire for Warner Bros. Spielberg is currently working on the fourth Indiana Jones movie and will follow that with a movie about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. (Variety)

Warner picks up Nathan Hale bio rights
Warner Bros. Pictures has acquired rights to an upcoming biography of American Revolutionary hero and spy Nathan Hale, written by journalist M. William Phelps, whose book, For the Sake of Liberty: America’s First Spy, publishes this fall. Barry Josephson’s Josephson Entertainment will produce. Hale was part of the first CIA organization formed in 1776. He is perhaps best known for his final words before being hanged by the British: ”I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Hale was captured after disguising as a Dutch merchant and sneaking his way into Manhattan, after it was captured by the British, to gather information about troop movement. (Variety)

Coolidge, Ruck get ABC pilot
Jennifer Coolidge (Click, For Your Consideration) and Alan Ruck (Spin City) will star in ABC’s comedy pilot Family of the Year. The show is about the Halloways, a 10-time winner of the ”family of the year” title in their New Mexico home town. Coolidge will play the family’s matriarch and a former beauty queen. Ruck will play her not-so-bright husband. (Hollywood Reporter)

Anna Chlumsky gets CW pilot
Anna Chlumsky, the actress who played MacCauley Culkin’s friend in 1991’s My Girl, has been tapped to star in the CW comedy pilot Eight Days a Week. Chlumsky will play a 20-something girl-next-door personal assistant to an egomaniacal website publisher. She recently appeared in 30 Rock and Law & Order. (Reuters/Hollywood Reporter)

Chris Kattan hosting new game show
SNL alum Chris Kattan will be the host of CBS’ Game Show in My Head, a new game show pilot from Katalyst, Hat Trick, and Fox21 that revolves around people performing stunts for hidden cameras. (Variety)

MTV teaming iFilm with Spike TV
MTV is pairing its iFilm property with Spike TV to create a new entertainment site aimed at young men. It will feature Spike’s TV shows, user-generated videos, and original Web content aimed at males 18-34, Spike’s on-air demographic. The as-yet unnamed site will compete with CollegeHumor.com and Break.com. (Hollywood Reporter)

MoveOn sues Viacom
Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org is suing Viacom, alleging that it forced YouTube to remove its parody video from the viral video website because it contained clips from Comedy Central’s Colbert Report. Parodies are largely protected from standard copyright infringement. Early Thursday (March 22), the video ”Stop the Falseness” was removed and replaced with a message saying Viacom requested it be taken down, but it was back up on the site later that day. Viacom lawyers say they have no problem with the parody video. Lawyers for MoveOn point out that Comedy Central shows like The Daily Show frequently air networks’ news clips for their parodies. (Variety)

Angarano set to star with Chan and Li
Michael Angarano (Lords of Dogtown) is in final talks to star with Jackie Chan and Jet Li in an as-yet unnamed martial arts movie Rob Minkoff is directing for J&J. Angarano will play a troubled 17-year-old wannabe kung fu warrior sent back in time to ancient China on an impossible mission. The project is set to begin shooting in May. (Hollywood Reporter)

HBO shoots final episode of The Sopranos
Hundreds of fans and onlookers gathered to witness the shooting of scenes for the final episode of The Sopranos inside Holsten’s Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Parlour in Bloomfield, NJ on Thursday (March 22). All the show’s biggest stars were shooting, and a local liquor store had Lorraine Bracco’s line of wines displayed in its window. (Star Ledger)

IN THE GOSSIPS

Page Six: Grindhouse was able to avoid an NC-17 rating by shortening some of its more graphic scenes.

Rush & Molloy: Jay-Z may have trouble negotiating a more lucrative new contract as the continuing CEO of Def Jam.