Today's Film News: Knights in Lights

By Katey Rich

For a mysterious, ancient society, the Knights Templar sure seem to love the spotlight. Following in the steps of The Da Vinci Code, another script about the group will be developed for a major studio. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Universal has picked up The Knights Templar, a spec script by Adam Torchia and Justin Stanley that's set around the time of the Crusades. Timur Bekmambetov, who directed this summer's Wanted for Universal, will be one of the film's producers.

Despite his very public falling out with Tom Cruise in 2006, Sumner Redstone said he would not prevent the actor from starring in Paramount's planned fourth installment in the Mission: Impossible series. Variety writes that Redstone left the decision up to Brad Grey, Paramount's head. It feels like ages since Cruise's infamous Oprah couch-jumping and quickie wedding, but it was only in 2006, after the release of Mission: Impossible III, that Cruise's public shenanigans got him kicked off the Paramount lot. With a saner return visit to Oprah airing this week and Redstone's blessing, could Cruise be on his way back to Hollywood's good graces?

Rapper Common is busy building up a respectable action movie resume for himself. He'll have a part in Wanted this summer, and now he's signed on to take a role in Terminator: Salvation, the reboot of the Terminator franchise. Variety reports that Common will play a freedom fighter who joins John Connor (Christian Bale) in his fight against the evil machines that have taken over the world.

And finally, the most interesting rumor about the Sex and the City movie has been debunked, and it was such a persistent rumor that even The Hollywood Reporter felt it was worth mentioning. Michael Patrick King, the movie's director and the executive producer of the original TV series, has confirmed that rumors of Mr. Big's death have been greatly exaggerated. "Kill Mr. Big? I would have been chased around the planet by women with torches," King said. If you don't know who Mr. Big is, well, you probably weren't going to see the movie anyway, so hopefully I won't get chased by my own set of torch-wielding spoiler-phobes.