Today's Film News: Even Badder Lieutenant

By Katey Rich

Just yesterday in his review of the new movie Vice, our Ethan Alter wrote that Abel Ferrara's 1992 Bad Lieutenant was the direct source of " the current wave of flawed flatfoots," a.k.a. corrupt cops. Now, as so often happens in Hollywood, things have come full circle, and Werner Herzog is somehow involved. Herzog will direct Nicolas Cage in a remake of Bad Lieutenant, about a cop heavily involved in drugs, gambling and illicit sex. According to Variety, the screenwriter will be Billy Finkelstein, who has written for TV's "Law & Order" and "NYPD Blue."

Oliver Stone is the anti-Bush rabblerouser of the moment as he works on W, but Michael Moore won't be waiting in the wings for long. The Hollywood Reporter writes that he's teaming up with Overture Films and Paramount Vantage to make a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11, his documentary that grossed over $220 million worldwide in 2004. The doc will aim to examine America's role in the world and how it has changed since Bush took office in 2000. Producers will be talking it up at Cannes, but the movie won't be released until mid-2009, well after the current election madness has ended and George W. Bush has left office. I'm not sure why Moore wants to tangle with a newly retired President with a lot of time suddenly on his hands, but hey, that's his choice.

"Islands in the Stream": not just a Dolly Parton song! It's the last novel ever written by Ernest Hemingway, and soon it will be a movie written, directed, produced and acted by Tommy Lee Jones. He'll play Thomas Hudson, a reclusive painter who, in a familiar turn for Hemingway fans, battles personal demons after moving to a tropical location following service in the Navy. John Goodman and Morgan Freeman may also join in, according to The Reporter. Jones co-wrote the script with Bill Witliff, who spent some time on the high seas writing the George Clooney movie The Perfect Storm.

And finally, even Disney may be getting into the political game. The studio and Jerry Bruckheimer have acquired the rights to The Increment, an international spy thriller that involves an invasion of Iran. Variety reports that the screenwriter is no stranger to hot topics: He wrote the novel that became Body of Lies, the Jordan-set political drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio that comes out this fall.