Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are reuniting at Warner Bros. The Hollywood Reporter says the longtime friends and sometime collaborators are negotiating to close a first-look producing deal at WB. Details beyond that are vague.

It’s been 13 years since the duo stepped into the spotlight with Good Will Hunting, which they starred in and co-wrote. The Gus Van Sant directed drama won them a Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1998.

Previously, the pair created and ran LivePlanet. With it they produced the Project Greenlight movies. Project Greenlight was a reality show that focused on amateur filmmaking. The three films that came out of it are Stolen Summer (2002), The Battle of Shaker Heights (2003) and Feast (2005).

Affleck made his directorial debut in 2007 with Gone Baby Gone, starring his younger brother Casey. The movie, based on a book by Dennis Lehane, follows two Boston area detectives investigating a little girl’s kidnapping. His next turn at the helm will for Warner Bros. with Our Town, which he also co-wrote and stars in. The crime thriller is scheduled for a September release. As an actor, he most recently appeared in He’s Just Not That into You, State of Play, and Extract and will soon be seen in The Company Men.

Damon is nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in 2009’s Invictus, in which he stars with Morgan Freeman. His coming projects include Hearafter, The Adjustment Bureau and The Green Zone, which comes out March 12.

It seems that Universal is going to ride this one until the wheels fall off. The studio is planning to bring American Pie back into theatres with the writers from Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle.

The Los Angeles Times says scribes Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are to be hired to script a new take on the Pie franchise. The last movie to be released to theatres was American Wedding in 2003.

In the years since, there have been four straight-to-DVD spin-off flicks: Band Camp (2005), The Naked Mile (2006), Beta House (2007) and The Book of Love (2009).

The original American Pie, about a group of high school boys making a pact to lose their virginities, was directed by Paul and Chris Weitz and released in 1999 and grossed $200 million worldwide. It featured an ensemble cast that included Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Shannon Elizabeth, Alyson Hannigan and Eugene Levy. Word is that the studio would like to bring back the original cast and that some of the actors are interested, though no deals have been made.

One person who has said he would not return, however, is William Scott. The actor, who played the obnoxious party boy Steve Stifler in the three previous movies, told Moviehole.net a couple of years ago, “I knew when I did [American Pie 3], I was like, ”I just want to complete this character”. It was like, what else can I do that’s disgusting? What’s the point of doing a movie if you can’t do anything else to top the last one? …there’s nothing else to do.”

(Image: Universal Pictures)

From mutant to makeup salesperson. What a range.

Hugh Jackman will star in Avon Man, a film about a laid-off car dealer who takes up selling catalogued cosmetic to make ends meet. Variety says Enchanted director Kevin Lima is attached to direct and a tweet from Production Weekly says filming will begin in April.

According to Variety, the script is written by Kevin Bisch, who also penned Hitch. Jackman’s down-and-out character turns things around when he uses his good looks and charm to become a top Avon seller. He convinces his friend to join him and win a regional sales contest.

Jackman is also producing. Among the Australian star’s other pending projects are Wolverine 2, soon to shoot in Japan, and Reel Steel, a DreamWorks science fiction flick. He is also said to be attached to The Greatest American Showman, about the life of P.T. Barnum. His past credits include the X-Men movies, The Prestige and Kate & Leopold.

Kevin Lima is said to have several projects in development. One of the them is the feature film adaptation of the board game Candyland.

(Photo by PR Photos)

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A screenplay for a Kurt Cobain biopic is getting a rework by Oscar nominated writer-director Oren Moverman.

The Hollywood Reporter says Moverman, who has two Academy nods for his directorial debut, The Messenger, is in negotiations to rewrite and direct the as-yet-untitled  Universal script.

According to THR, screenwriter David Benioff (Brothers) first took on the project in 2007, doing firsthand research with Cobain’s old friends in Aberdeen and Seattle, Washington. On top of those accounts, material for the story of the grunge pioneer, who committed suicide in 1994, will also come partially from the Charles R. Cross 2001 biography, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain.

Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, is an executive producer along with her lawyer Howard Weitzman.

A 2005 film by Gus Van Sant, Last Days, was a fictional take on the lead up to Cobain’s death.

The Isreali-born Moverman has also co-written scripts for Married Life, Jesus’ Son and the experimental Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There.

(Photo by PR Photos)

You don’t deserve to see Jessica Simpson naked. That’s what she says.

Simpson will go skimpy but she won’t take it off. The actress/singer who donned short shorts for her role as Daisy Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard movie and a bikini for her These Boots are Made for Walkin’ video, says she’ll never get naked for a movie.

According to Starpulse, Simpson told Allure Magazine, “I will never do nudity. I don’t care how dark and intellectual the role could be… I don’t care if I frickin’ could get an Oscar for it, I’m not going to do it. Those accolades mean nothing to me.”

She says only her future second husband will get to see her in the buff, adding, “I don’t think people deserve to see what’s under my clothing. That’s only for my next husband!”

Simpson’s career and personal life have been the subject of much scrutiny and derision lately, though her ex-boyfriend, musician John Mayer, gave her bedroom prowess props in a recent Playboy interview, saying she was “crazy” in bed and comparing her to “sexual napalm.”

So far Simpson is in no danger of winning any Academy Awards. Her cinematic oeuvre consists mainly of critical and box office disasters such as Major Movie Star and Employee of the Month.

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Twilight star, Robert Pattinson, who is rather vocal about his discomfort with fame, recently got a lesson from a gracious Pierce Brosnan.

Brosnan plays Pattinson’s character’s father in the new movie, Remember Me, which also stars Lost’s Emilie de Ravin. And RPattz (as he’s known) told Vogue Magazine he learned something from watching the former James Bond interact with his public. Pattinson said, “I went out a couple of times with Pierce. He’s totally recognizable, and he makes no effort to tone it down. Some people were glancing over at us in the restaurant, and he just went over and introduced himself. And it does work. It dissipates all the attention.”

As useful as this tactic seems to be, Pattinson doesn’t use it. “Me?” he says, “I just crawl under the table.”

And, despite his praise for Brosnan, Pattinson didn’t miss another opportunity to complain about his fans and the paparazzi. “It was the most ridiculous experience,” he said of being mobbed in the streets of New York.

Remember Me stars Pattinson as Tyler Hawkins, a rebellious young man from a wealthy family, who has a difficult relationship with his father (Brosnan). Things look up when Tyler meets Ally (de Ravin) but the pair soon find their relationship threatened.

According to the Vogue interview, Pattinson, who plays brooding/stalking vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies, is eager to start playing complicated human beings.

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Robert De Niro is the favourite of the people formerly know as retired folks. The actor was handed a lifetime achievement award by AARP The Magazine on Tuesday evening at the 9th Movies for Grownups Awards.

AARP The Magazine, geared towards those over 50 (AARP once stood for American Association of Retired People), is the world’s largest circulation mag, according to its website.

Starpulse says De Niro was honoured for his four-decade long career at a Los Angeles ceremony. The actor, director and producer made his first movie in 1965 and has won two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe. He will soon appear in the action flick, Machete, and the comedy Little Fockers.

Among the other over 50s awarded by the magazine were Jeff Bridges, who was named Best Actor for his role in Crazy Heart, and Helen Mirren, who took Best Actress for The Last Station. Alec Baldwin was Best Supporting Actor for It’s Complicated and his ex-wife Kim Basinger won Best Supporting Actress for The Burning Pain.

2009’s Best Movie For Grownups was Clint Eastwood’s Invictus. Julie & Julia was named the Best Grownup Love Story.

Bill Newcott, entertainment editor of the magazine, says: “In 2009, 50+ actors and filmmakers took center-stage on the silver screen, turning in performances and films that were riveting and nothing short of daring. Tackling war, apartheid, sexuality and adding real depth to romantic comedies, the 50+ Hollywood community shows once again that they are an integral, much-needed element of the film industry. And 60-year old Meryl Streep proved without a doubt that she is the leading lady of our times, a critical and box-office cottage industry.”

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Gwyneth Paltrow has joined the cast of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, reuniting her with her Talented Mr. Ripley co-star Matt Damon.

Also already on board are Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law. Deadline Hollywood just reported that Paltrow too has signed on.

Contagion was written by The Informant!’s Scott Z Burns, who recently explained the inspiration. The Playlist blog reported on an interview, in which Burns revealed that, while making The Informant!, a discussion about germs arose between himself and Soderbergh, in relation to a scene in which a character sneezes. This, said the Playlist, lead to talk of “how the nature of a virus could be used to deal with ‘issues of sovereignty’ and as a metaphor for the way ‘information and misinformation travel’ in contemporary society.” And the idea for Contagion was born. It was reportedly described as Traffic meets Outbreak.

Little else is known about the plot.

The script is apparently so good that Soderbergh has fast tracked it ahead of the Liberace biopic, which will star Michel Douglas as the flamboyant pianist and Matt Damon as his lover.

Gwyneth Paltrow has wrapped filming on Iron Man 2, in which she reprises her role as Pepper Potts. And she is currently working on The Danish Girl, the fictionalized version of the true story about the first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Paltrow plays the wife of Einer Wegener, who later became Lili Elbe.

Sandra Bullock is worried about where her career is headed now that she has an Oscar nomination. Because where do you go from the top?

According to Access Hollywood, the star — who is nominated for Best Actress for her role as a suburban mom with a heart of gold in The Blind Side – told reporters at the recent Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon that she’s “scared” of stepping backwards.

“It scares me more than anything, because you think, ‘What do I do now? What do I do now that I don’t step backwards — I step forward.’ I’ve been thinking a lot about that – what do I do next?” She said. “I feel like because of this honour and what I’ve been given these last couple of months, I really have an obligation not to step back even the smallest bit.”

Bullock has already received a Critic’s Choice, a People’s Choice, a Golden Globe and SAG Award for the role. To balance things out, however, she also garnered a Worst Actress Razzie nomination for her part in the comedy All About Steve. Bullock recently said she is honoured by the Razzie nom and that she sees it as equally as important as the Oscar accolade. She plans to attend both ceremonies.

Bullock’s Best Actress Oscar competition is Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), Helen Mirren (The Last Station) and Carey Mulligan (An Education).

Al Pacino will replace Robert De Niro in Dito Montiel’s police thriller Son of No One, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The movie is also said to feature Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard, Ray Liotta and Katie Holmes, though the official deals are still in the making.

Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Fighting) is writing and directing the movie about a young officer assigned to work in the neighbourhood where he grew up. THR says an old secret surfaces and threatens to destroy his life and family.

It is not known why De Niro dropped out of the project (says Moviehole.net). He will soon be seen in Robert Rodriquez’s action flick Machete and the comedy Little Fockers and, it was reported this week, will be reuniting with Martin Scorsese for a mob movie (but not, as some are reporting, a remake of Taxi Driver).

Pacino’s recent film’s include 2007’s Ocean’s Thirteen and 2008’s Righteous Kill, in which he appeared alongside De Niro.