A raft of football pictures can be expected in the run-up to the World Cup in Germany next year, writes Michael Dwyer

Paul Mercier is now shooting Studs in Lucan with a cast led by Brendan Gleeson. Danny Cannon, meanwhile, has replaced Michael Winterbottom as director on Goal!, with Mexican actor Kuno Becker (who replaced Diego Luna) as a young Latino player aiming for a contract with Newcastle United. The cast includes Stephen Dillane, Alessandro Nivola, Kieran O'Brien and Anna Friel, along with appearances from Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd and captain Alan Shearer, and David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and Raul.

In Brazil, Walter Salles is planning an early autumn shoot for Linha Do Pase, about four young brothers trying to break through the social apartheid by becoming professional footballers. Yasmin director Kenny Glenaan is preparing Ducane's Boys, which depicts football agents as modern-day slave traders. In the Finnish comedy FC Venus, housewives fed up with their football-obsessed husbands decide to form their own team (a German remake of it is already in the works). And Kenneth Branagh, Emir Kusturica and Werner Herzog are among the directors contributing 15-minute segments to an omnibus movie about football.

Already in the can are two German movies: Sherry Hormann's Balls, about a player who starts his own club, and One Day in Europe, which revolves around the Champions League final; the three-parter Tickets, in which Ken Loach's segment follows three rowdy Celtic supporters en route to Rome for a game; and Lexi Alexander's Hooligans, featuring Elijah Wood as a Harvard student turned West Ham football thug.