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: Alec Baldwin

His turn as Annette Benning’s alcoholic husband in this week’s Running With Scissors is just the latest in a recent spurt of top-notch character performances from the former A-lister, showing he’s well on his way to having a bit of a career revival following his Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination back in 2004, and his Best Comic TV Actor Golden Globe this year for 30 Rock.

Next up – on 23rd February – is Robert De Niro’s intriguing-sounding tale of the birth of the FBI The Good Shepherd, starring Matt Damon with the likes of Angelina Jolie, De Niro himself, Joe Pesci and Michael Gambon in support. That will be followed by the less promising, yet potentially interesting, 1980s-set coming of age gangster drama Brooklyn Rules, starring Freddie Prinze Jr, Mena Suvari and Scott “son of James” Caan.

Speaking of Freddie Prinze Jr, Baldwin’s next film after that will be Suburban Girl, a romantic comedy of relationships with age differences where he gets all loved up with Freddie’s real-world better half, Sarah Michelle Gellar – who at 29 is a good 20 years younger than him. Nice work if you can get it…

Then there’s another 1980s-set coming of age flick, Lymelife, though this time it’s a family-based comedy, with Baldwin as the patriarch of a family that includes Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory “brother of Macaulay” Culkin, before Baldwin heads back to the war film genre that has served him so well in the past for The Forbidden City, based around the post-WWII Sino-American hunt for Japanese war criminals. Could be good…