Variety reports that real life husband and wife team Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany are set to appear onscreen in a psychological fantasy thriller called Born written by Clive Barker, Daniel Simpson and Paul Kaye.

The story revolves around a couple who settle down in a seemingly idyllic English town to raise a family. Their perfect life is shaken when the husband, a claymation artist, discovers his characters are acting out a nightmare that comes to life.

Guillermo del Toro, Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin are taking production duties.  Animators Charles, Stephen & Edward Chiodo of Chiodo Bros., who worked on Elf and Team America will be producing stop-motion animated sequences that will be integrated into the movie. Daniel Simpson will direct with production beginning mid-August in the UK.

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Reuters reports that Beowulf will not be ready in time for the Venice Film Festival, which runs from August 29th to September 8th. The film, adapted from the Old English heroic epic poem composed in the later Early Middle Ages should be ready by November.

Meanwhile, Beowulf writer Neil Gaiman has been speaking to Underground Online about progress on the Robert Zemeckis directed project-

‘What’s really bizarre is that I’m not going to know for another eight weeks what Beowulf looks like. I’ve seen the entire rough cut, I’ve had bits of things that I’ve done bits with, I’ve seen the trailer, but everything that I’ve seen has been unfinished. It cuts between naked people and naked hairless people and it goes from them looking like Sony Playstation characters, with human heads cropped out from the video footage, so we know what they’re saying. It’s the most bizarre, hodge-podge way of doing it, but having said that, currently the computers are grinding away. The very first reel should be submitted in July and if it’s submitted in time we’re going to get to show it, I think, in full 3-D on Wednesday night at Comic-Con at a special preview.’

Visit the official Beowulf website.

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Variety reports that Rachel Weisz is set to star in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of the novel by Alice Sebold.

Weisz will play the mother of a young girl who is abducted and is feared to have been murdered in a story adapted by Jackson’s Lord of the Rings writing partners, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh.

DreamWorks begins production on the film in October, and Paramount Pictures will distribute worldwide. Carolynne Cunningham, Jackson, Walsh and Aimee Peyronnet will produce, while Film 4’s Tessa Ross will executive produce with Ken Kamins and Jim Wilson. The film will shoot in Pennsylvania and New Zealand.

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Oscar winner William Hurt has joined the cast of Marvel Studios’ The Incredible Hulk says the Hollywood Reporter.

Hurt, who received the Academy Award for Best Actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1985 has been cast as Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, a role played in Ang Lee’s version of the story in 2003 by Sam Elliott. Hurt has most recently been seen in the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

The movie, which is directed by Louis Leterrier, sees Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) on the run, trying to avoid capture long enough to cure the condition that turns him into a monster whilst facing off against supervillain The Abomination, played by Tim Roth.  Zak Penn has written the story with Universal Pictures distributing.

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