Walsh scripts Sands story

IRISH playwright Enda Walsh has written the screenplay for a film on the last six weeks in the life of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who was 27 when he died in the Maze Prison on May 5th, 1981. A month earlier, he was elected as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in a by-election.

The film, Hunger, will be directed by Steve McQueen, who won the Turner Prize in 1999 for a series of short films. Walsh scripted the 2001 film of his stage play, Disco Pigs.

Casting has yet to be announced for Hunger, which is one of four feature films to receive backing from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) in its latest round of funding.

One of those projects, Kisses, written and directed by Lance Daly (who made The Halo Effect) is now shooting in Dublin.

It features Shane Curry (11) and Kelly O'Neill (10) as children who run away from home at Christmas, and the cast includes Stephen Rea, Paul Roe and Neili Conroy. The producer is Macdara Kelleher of Fastnet Films.

The BCI is also backing Alarm, the new movie from writer-director Gerard Stembridge, which will be produced by Venus Films, and Eugene O'Brien's adaptation of his stage play, Eden, to be produced by Samson Films and directed by Declan Recks.

Dylan Thomas - milking it

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys (who starred in the Irish-made Peaches) will play poet Dylan Thomas, with Lindsay Lohan as his wife, Caitlin, Keira Knightley as his friend Vera Phillips and Cillian Murphy as William Killick, who married Phillips, in The Best Time of Our Lives. It will be directed by John Maybury, who made Love is the Devil and The Jacket. As the film is set to start shooting in Wales next month, it remains to be seen if two rival projects will go ahead.

Mick Davis plans to direct Dylan, featuring Kevin McKidd and Kelly Reilly as Dylan and Caitlin Thomas. And Welsh director Marc Evans has been attached to direct Caitlin, featuring Miranda Richardson in the title role and Michael Sheen as Dylan, with Rosamund Pike and Kevin Zegers as their younger incarnations. Pierce Brosnan planned to play a cameo as Caitlin's psychiatrist and to produce the film through his company, Irish Dreamtime.

Kidman and Luhrmann do Darwin

Six years after Moulin Rouge completed his Red Curtain trilogy that began with Strictly Ballroom and continued with Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann starts shooting his fourth feature film next month. Titled Australia and set in the late 1930s, it's a western starring Nicole Kidman as an aristocrat who takes over a ranch in Darwin, and with the help of a "rough-hewn drover" (Hugh Jackman), she takes on the local cattle barons after her land. Matters get even more complicated when the Japanese forces bomb Darwin during the war.

The long gap between Moulin Rouge (which also starred Kidman) and Australia can be explained by the collapse of Luhrmann's Alexander the Great project, which was to star Leonardo DiCaprio, when Oliver Stone's rival Alexander won the race to get into production first. In late 2004 Luhrmann and Kidman collaborated again when he directed her in the most expensive commercial ever made, a four-minute promotion for Chanel No 5.

Jordan boxes clever

Neil Jordan will write and direct Heart-Shaped Box, based on the first novel by Joe Hill, son of Stephen. It deals with an ageing rock star with such a penchant for the macabre that he goes on eBay and buys a suit said to contain a ghost. Jordan is also to direct Killing on Carnival Row, a fantasy thriller set in a fictitious Victorian city. Jordan's 15th feature film, The Brave One, a thriller starring Jodie Foster, opens here in October.

Dogs has another day

Pointless remakes continue to get the green light in Hollywood. Next up is Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent Straw Dogs, which proved highly controversial when released in 1971. Former film critic Rod Lurie, who directed The Contender and The Last Castle, will make the new version. The original starred Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician and Susan George as his English wife, and was set in Cornwall. The remake is likely to be set in the US.