There are three groups of people that are staying away from Paul Thomas Anderson's next film: a.) Companies afraid to fund a project that can potentially lean to the left, b.) Hollywood players who prefer being on good terms with Tom Cruise, C.) and production companies without deep enough pockets for an auteur film of this stature. Everyone else can apply. While this project won't find a partner in Universal (did they not like the experience funding an auteur film in Basterds?), there is word that the River Road (who backed Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life) are the only ones with the balls or the deep pockets to finance such a project.

Here's hoping that the first purchase out of SXSW receives at least 1/20th of the overwhelming support that Paranormal Activity got in its box office take. After the film's premiere screening at the Austin-based film festival, Magnet didn't waste much time securing the rights to Monsters - the company know for its Six Shooter series have grabbed Gareth Edward's indie film debut which is part road movie, part sci-fi.

You can now refer to Julianne Moore as cinema's Queen of Dystopia. After taking some pretty rough turns in Children of Men and Blindness, she'll now pair with Kirsten Stewart on hubby Bart Freundlich's Backwoods, which should not be confused as a U.S remake of Koldo Serra's The Backwoods starring Gary Oldman.

The trades report that the Weinstein Co. have melted for the small-town America war of the butter sculptures comedy starring Jennifer Garner and the newly added Kate Hudson.

Jennifer Garner might have found her friendly competition in Kate Hudson for the upcoming shoot of Butter - the top tier Black List script from first time scribe Jason Micallef that would see Jim Field Smith (She's Out of My League) begin lensing on April 17th in Shreveport. Conflicting reports have Jim Carrey playing "former" butter carving champ Bob Pickler, husband to Garner's Laura Pickler, but Movieline is reporting that he has passed on the project.

A good 6 weeks delayed from the tentative January start date, Alexander Payne's The Descendants will finally begin filming, setting up shop today, and the entire rest of the cast besides the already named George Clooney have been named. Judy Greer, who has just been named to the Duplass bros. new film Jeff Who Lives at Home, will play the wife in a coma role.

THR reports that Focus is potentially tying down Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess for what is described as When Harry Met Sally (I wonder how many pitching sessions in the past two decades use that exact title?)

Hugh Jackman let slip that he'll be on the side of the "antagonists" in the Paul Webb scripted/Lee Daniels directed Selma. The Aussie will play sheriff Clark and thus becomes the third actor to join the project - Bobby De Niro playing Governor George Wallace, and Lenny Kravitz plays activist Andrew Young, but there are a batch of bigger roles that have yet to be filled including the man of the hour, Martin Luther King.

I remember thinking how odd it was when the Weinsteins purchased Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine at Sundance. They would now have not one, but two Ryan Gosling films to release this year. If you're a regular reader of the site, then you know that we've been anticipating the release of Andrew Jarecki's All Good Things for a long time now, and the end-product has suffered tremendously because of the Weinsteins' financial woes.

James Franco digs poetry and filmmaking, and while Howl is the perfect marriage between the two, looks like multi-tasker is set to take on more projects of the same vein.

Among the projects in the Shelton's pipeline, we find a project with Sherman Alexie, and now you can add Joshua Ferris’ recent novel Then We Came To An End for Anne Carey and Ted Hope's This is That Productions (their upcoming slate includes James Gunn's Super and Anton Corbijn's The American).

You can be sure that the Sony Pictures Classics folks aren't looking at receipts for Woody Allen's last film, Whatever Works to gauge the potential return for his next picture. With romantic entanglements between Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Freida Pinto and Naomi Watts...

It's official folks, Evan Rachel Wood and Guy Pearce are boarding Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce miniseries, Production Weekly reports that they'll be filming for a seven-eight week shoot out of Killer Films' backyard of New York, between April 12th to June 1st.

With principle set pieces of the dramedy already secured in Rogen, McAvoy, Kendrick and Dallas Howard, Variety reports that we now we have vets Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall filling out the secondary roles in Jonathan Levine's (please don't re-title it) I'm With Cancer.

Masochist indie distributor First Independent Pictures will once again have their work cut out for them, as they board a coming-of-age tale about an Hasidic Jew who turns into a drug mule. I use the term masochist, because last year Gary Rubin's FIP took on the difficult to market Big Fan (the story of an obsessed stay-at-home NY Giants fan) and Gigantic (a bed and mattress salesmen in Paul Dano who desperately wants to adopt a child).

Larry Clark isn't dropping projects, but instead switching up titles, adding Dakota Johnson and is going to finally get back into the director's chair for a five week shoot in Los Angeles next March 15th according to Production Weekly's twitter feed.

Having worked with him twice before, Glenn Close is taking a beloved play she starred in, perhaps wore a fake beard for and is shepherding the project for Rodrigo Garcia to direct for a silver screen translation. Close has already worn many hats (she co-produces and co-wrote) The Singular Life Of Albert Nobbs, which is being prepped to shoot in July...

Fox Searchlight have made their first "public appearance" with Betty Anne Waters - a simple send out to all the media with the pic below and a mention of a fall release. As I mentioned before, I think they are hedging their bets early underlining that they thought they had a leader of the pack pick with Hilary Swank in Amelia and are looking to make amends with a picture that fans of Crazy Heart and The Blind Side might like.

It was pretty much set in stone since it was announced that Todd Haynes would be turning to television that Killer Films "Mildred Pierce" would be housed at HBO. The deal is done and they have the house keys. The network has confirmed that the five-hour miniseries will be co-produced with MGM, Killer Films and John Wells Prods. Production begins in April, in New York and while no other cast have been mentioned, I imagine it won't be a major problem to find some gents to play alongside Kate Winslet who is of course playing the film's tragi-queen, and I'm looking forward in seeing who'll be cast as the troublemaking daughter Veda.

Joan Jett and Cherie Currie aren't the only female frontman to receive the big screen treatment this year (The Runaways), as Lodge Kerrigan has "secretly" filmed a story on Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick - the film is actually already in the can and filmed last May. It's Kerrigan's first film since the anxiety-filled 2004 film Keane, which starred bite-sized Abigail Breslin and Damian Lewis in his best work to date. Currently on Wild Bunch's film slate, Kerrigan's Rebecca H. was funded with French coin and the film stars Géraldine Pailhas (Ozon's 5X2) as Slick.

The buyers at Summit Entertainment must be fans of the annual Black List of the Best in Unproduced screenplays as they have just added their third in a little less than half a year. After picking up the top of 2008's list in The Beaver (at the very beginning of production) and setting up shop for Duncan Jones' forthcoming Source Code (a 2007 top 20 spec), the indie distributor which was able to bankroll of three projects due to the Twilight films has bought the North American rights to the (currently in pre-production) film once going by the excellent title of I'm with Cancer.

Oranges has television director Julian Farino attached to helm and now, three actors known for their work on the tele might be joining the dark comedy as well. Hugh Laurie might be taking on his first leading role in film - as the patriarch/adulterer in an American Beauty-esque role and might possibly star alongside either or both Mila Kunis and Leighton Meester. L.A Times reports that the trio of actors are attached to the 2008 Blacklist favorite (it was the runner-up to first place The Beaver, currently in post). If this goes into production anytime soon, this should be a hot title for buyers in Cannes.

Scripted by Delpy, 2 Days in New York centres again on French woman Marion (Delpy), who has broken up with Jack and now lives in New York with their children. Her Parisian family come to visit her, but the cultural differences between her eccentric father and new American boyfriend will turn out to be explosive. Meanwhile, her sister has had the "good" idea of bringing an ex-boyfriend from Paris and there is the pressure of an upcoming photography exhibition.

Selected as one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces, Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo will get to see her directorial debut go the theatrical release route - what is of interest here is that she penned and directed a horror thriller (a rarity of sorts for a female filmmaker) that landed at the AFI last November --- a showcase that eventually panned out to the deal for After.Life.

The trades report that he'll be re-teaming with The New World's Christian Bale, Rachel McAdams who could use a film of this stature in her filmography, Javier Bardem and former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. Nicolas Gonda, Sarah Green and Bill Pohlad are producing, which means Apparition would be the logical distributor to come onboard for the U.S.

The Fox Searchlight titled tanked at the B.O., but an important lesson was learnt - the "beat the system type" characters can be positioned for Oscar - I'm citing The Blind Side and Crazy Heart, another Searchlight film that was thrown into the hat late, and managed to grab a pair of acting noms as an example. Something tells me that today's deal for Betty Ann Waters - a David vs. Goliath biopic will ensure that the indie division remains relevant/profitable/award-proof in market.

Before signing up on Star Trek and the forthcoming Thor, Aussie actor Chris Hemsworth took on a low budget indie along with Sean Bean -- Ca$h, a film destined for greatness on the homevid front is going to receive a theatrical release via Roadside Attractions in late March.

Scripted by the "Coen-sisters", Jill and Karen Sprecher (sister and creative partner), The Convincer will feature a trio of vet indie actors in Billy Crudup, Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin (who was also featured in Sprecher's 13 Convos...) in a story about a desperate insurance salesman who devises a plot to obtain a rare violin.

The most promising item from Sundance's NEXT section in terms of commercial prospects has been picked up for distribution by the Phase 4 Films folks with a perfectly fitted Summer release in the works. Katie Aselton's The Freebie, a no budget indie film that shot in eleven days has Dax Shepard in the co-lead.

It's pretty obvious that Hollywood has a huge interest in the super heros that spill out of the pages of your typical comic book, and while I'm aware that there is an alternative graphic novel industry that serves a huge following, beyond the small sampling of American Splendor, Ghost World and Art School Confidential, I'm clueless as to why Indiewood would be interested in the graphic novel/comic book form.

From General Hospital to in desperate need of a trip to the hospital - James Franco will find himself in the rock-climbing shoes of Aron Ralston in Danny Boyle's 90 minute exercise of show, not tell for Fox Searchlight. This Production Weekly twitter feed should get a lot of traction from the film news media, as most have been speculating since November whether the Ryan Gosling and Cillian Murphy would indeed play the solo part.