News: Simon Pegg

Former Shaun of the Dead and Spaced star Pegg is, with this week’s Hot Fuzz, making yet another strong case that he’s the first British comic with a real chance to make it big in America since Peter Sellers – but will he be able to maintain the momentum?

He’s certainly got a fair few more in the works – from a planned new sitcom about a pub quiz team (with his Spaced, Shaun and Hot Fuzz co-star and real-world best buddy Nick Frost), La Triviata, due some time this year through to the animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, for which Pegg wrote the English screenplay (it was originally Norwegian) about a junkie elephant on the run and provides voice duties alongside the likes of Woody Harrelson, Kyle MacLachlan, Samantha Morton, David Tennant, Emilia Fox and Phil Daniels.

But there are also some bigger projects on the way, like the romantic comedy The Good Night, with Martin Freeman, Penelope Cruz, Danny DeVito, Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Gambon, or former Friends star David Schwimmer’s directorial debut Run, Frat Boy, Run, with Pegg starring alongside Thandie Newton and The Simpsons‘ Hank Azaria.

By far the most promising, however, is Pegg’s starring role in a big screen adaptation of Toby Young’s bestselling memoir of life at a high-end New York magazine, How to Lose Freinds and Alienate People – to be directed by Robert B Weide, best known for his work on the cult comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. That could well be enough to get Pegg into the Hollywood comedy A-list…

News: Gwyneth Paltrow

Following her turn in this week’s Infamous, Paltrow looks set to be on our screens rather more in coming months, following a break of a couple of years to start raising her family in which she’s mostly just appeared in the tabloids.

Next up – out in the UK on 2nd February – is the quirky comedy drama Running With Scissors, about a teenager from a troubled household who ends up living with his psychiatrist’s bizarre family for a year. Alongside Paltrow are some big and up-and-coming names, from her Shakespeare in Love co-star Joseph Feinnes through Alec Baldwin, Annette Benning, Evan Rachel Wood and Patrick Wilson. Could be good.

She’ll keep up the family theme with The Good Night, directed by her brother, Jake. Starring Martin Freeman asa former popstar turned advertising jingle writer who’s having a mid life crisis, the impressive cast includes the likes of Penelope Cruz, Danny De Vito and Simon Pegg. Another British-based movie – unsurprising as Paltrow now lives pretty much exclusively in London – is Love and other Distaters, a romantic comedy revolving around an American intern at the British version of fashion mag Vogue, and co-starring the likes of Orlando Bloom and Stephanie Beacham.

Then come her two biggest projects, bothe decidedly more American. She has just signed on to star alongside Robert Downey Jr in the big screen adaptation of comic book superhero Iron Man, due out next year and sure to be huge. But more interesting is Dirty Tricks – a drama set during the fallout from the Watergate affair, with Jim Broadbent brilliantly cast as disgraced President Richard Nixon, and co-starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Annette Benning, Sharon Stone and Meryl Streep. That could prove very promising indeed.

News: Adrien Brody

Oscar-winner Brody puts in a good turn as a noirish detective in this week’s Hollywoodland, though most of the Academy Awards buzz for this film seems to be centred around the “comeback” performance of his co-star Ben Affleck.

It could instead be the upcoming biopic of Spanish bullfighter Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez, Manolete, for which he trained in southern Spain to get the full bullfighting experience, which garners Brody his next batch of nominations. Likely to be a controversial movie for its potential to laud such a cruel sport, and coming from Menno Meyjes, the same writer/director responsible for the John Cusack-starring Hitler biopic Max, word is that the chemistry with co-star Penélope Cruz could make this one to remember on its release in Autumn 2007.

Brody will also be appearing in the experimental director Todd Haynes’ equally experimental exploration of Bob Dylan I’m Not There, alongside a ridiculously impressive cast of the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett,Charlotte Gainsbourg, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Julianne Moore. Due out next year, Dylan’s life and work is explored through seven characters representing different aspects of the man and music.