BUREAU MAKES A REBOUND The Massachusetts Film Bureau, the privatized reincarnation of the Massachusetts Film Office, will take its first major step toward supporting the local film industry with a gala fund-raiser featuring a showing of ''Moonlight Mile,'' with appearances by the film's writer-director Brad Silberling and stars Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon. The event - actually three levels of events - will be held Oct. 4 at the Loews Boston Common ($50 a person), the new Ladder District hotspot Felt ($250), and the Four Seasons Hotel ($1,000). All three events include a screening at the Loews movie theaters and a question-and-answer session with the director afterward. Filmed in Gloucester, Marblehead, and Riverside, Calif., ''Moonlight Mile'' also stars cutie Jake Gyllenhaal and Holly Hunter. The Massachusetts Film Office was closed at the end of July after its budget was eliminated by the state Legislature. Executive Director Robin Dawson has reorganized it as a film bureau with the help of a new board that includes members of the film and business community. Before its elimination, the Massachusetts Film Office was credited with helping to bring $500 million into the local economy. Mark Wahlberg, Jay Leno , Ben Affleck , Neal McDonough , and Conan O'Brien are among the celebrities who have supported the local film industry and who have been contacted about attending the Oct. 4 fund-raisers. 

New cop on the block: Wahlberg plays a troubled L.A. officer in 'Boomtown.' 

Donnie Wahlberg has been beating improbable odds for most of his life. As a teenager, he overcame a rough childhood in a gritty Boston neighborhood to become part of New Kids on the Block, the teen-pop quintet that generated more than $100 million a year in revenues in the early '90s.

But faster than you can say "Christina Aguilera," the fame faded.

Yet, Wahlberg, 33, is succeeding again, by joining a relatively short roster - which includes his younger brother Mark - of music stars to successfully cross over into acting.

Following well-received parts in such films as "The Sixth Sense" and HBO's "Band of Brothers," Wahlberg takes on his first starring role on TV in NBC's "Boomtown," a drama in which he plays a troubled L.A. detective. 

"It's so tough to get away from that bad-boy image he had, and to be considered relevant in the acting community," says Robert Bucksbaum, president of Reel Source Inc., which forecasts movie performance for theaters. "He's really well-thought-of these days. He's really mapped out a good career for himself."

There is nothing automatic about shifting from stage to screen - just ask Britney Spears or Mariah Carey about that. But when he decided to switch, Wahlberg didn't let his past in music get in the way of his future as an actor.

"It was difficult to get hired," he says. "It was difficult to build and assemble a body of work."

Wahlberg doesn't know if the change was more difficult because the New Kids were no longer on the charts, and he doesn't worry about it, either.

"Blaming past life is a cop-out," he says. "When we're hugely successful, everybody opens doors. But when it stops, we cry that no one will open doors anymore. But guess what? That's reality. To sit here and say, 'Woe is me, I used to be in a boy band, but no one will give me a job in a movie,' that's just weak."

Wahlberg's work ethic stems from growing up in the '70s and '80s in the working-class, racially divided Dorchester area of Boston, with eight brothers and sisters. His father, a truck driver, and his mother, a nurse, separated when he was a child.

In 1984, Wahlberg, Joey McIntyre, Danny Wood and brothers Jon and Jordan Knight were picked by producer Maurice Starr, who also created New Edition, to become a pop group. Their first album, 1988's "Hangin' Tough" hit No. 1. They faded from the charts after their seventh album was released in 1994.

"With New Kids, we worked real hard, but maybe, because I was young, I didn't realize it," says Wahlberg. "Now I feel like I work so much harder. And I feel much more appreciation."

Wahlberg got his acting start in the 1996 Mel Gibson vehicle "Ransom," going from there to "Bullet" (1996), the TV film "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1998) and, that same year, "Southie," set in Dorchester.

"I do rely on my all my life experiences," Wahlberg says, noting that his gripping turn in "The Sixth Sense" was like a two-minute therapy session on film. He dropped 43 pounds for the part as one of Bruce Willis' patients.

"That day on the set, when he came in to do the scene, it was the most charged atmosphere," says M. Night Shyamalan, director of "The Sixth Sense" and the current film "Signs." "It went from making a movie to 'We don't know what's going to happen.' ... He just took off flying at 100 mph."

"I was just blown away by what I saw to be the soul in his eyes," says Graham Yost, executive producer of "Boomtown," who wrote Wahlberg's part specifically for him. "There was something just about the look of him."

"Boomtown" (airing Sundays at 10 p.m. starting Sept. 29) is set in Los Angeles and is built around imperfect heroes: Wahlberg's emotionally drained detective, a reporter (Nina Garbiras, "The $treet"), a beat cop struggling to prove himself (Jason Gedrick, "Falcone") and an ambitious deputy district attorney (Neal McDonough, "Band of Brothers").

Committing to "Boomtown" was a leap for Wahlberg on several levels. It was a longterm project that might trip up his new career path. And he had other options. When Yost called, Wahlberg was in talks with Will Smith's production company to create a TV show. 

These days, Wahlberg finds himself working on a series all day and then going home - rather than to a hotel - for the first time since he became an entertainer. As a father of two boys, ages 9 and 11 months, with his wife of three years, Kim Fey (who performed with Mark Wahlberg's band, the Funky Bunch), Wahlberg is happy not to be on tour anymore.

Music, in fact, has taken a backseat to acting. He hasn't worked in music since producing his brother Mark's albums in 1991 and 1992. 

There is talk about the two working together again - this time on a film - but Wahlberg pllays down such discussions.

"I've been real focused on getting myself cemented out here," he says. "I got to think about getting my next job before doing some pipe-dream movie with my brother. While [Mark's] a lot more situated out here, I think he probably feels the same thing."

There's also the fear that, just as quickly as life changed for the better when he joined the New Kids, the acting career could go poof, leaving him with nothing. 

"I think the way we grew up," he says, "we wouldn't be surprised if somebody took it all away from us." 

According to current revisionist thinking, the movies of the '60s and '70s have been seriously underrated, a fact that's triggered a sudden rush of remakes from that period. The latest example is a 1969 caper movie called "The Italian Job," a new version of which is about to go into production at Paramount.

I think it's a great idea to remake the movies of the past, especially given the wariness with which studios approach contemporary subjects. Nonetheless, the '60s and '70s were a curious moment in time, and while it's tempting to appropriate the movie plots of that period, there are hidden traps to be overcome. And they're especially evident in "The Italian Job."

Maybe that's why it took 10 years for Paramount to mobilize a remake, compared with the 10 weeks required to put together the original. As a youthful newcomer to Paramount, I was surprised to find myself in the middle of the initial maelstrom.

Movies happened fast in the '60s and '70s because the studios were looking to create alchemy, not franchises. Start dates were triggered by the passion of the moment, not the presence of co-financiers and marketing partners. Movies would open on four or five screens, then try to build on word-of-mouth. The tyranny of the 5,000-screen premiere and the $40 million ad campaign was not even remotely foreseen.

Hence studio executives were searching for the hot idea, not the built-in sequel. Filmmakers wanted to shake up their audiences, but that didn't mean taking them on a theme park ride. The movies that resulted often were distinguished more by their subtext than by their narrative.

Which brings us back to "The Italian Job." It was one of the first scripts I read when I got to Paramount. It struck me first and foremost as a terrific action film, replete with vivid characters, great chases and all sorts of delicious conceits going on in the background.

It also was one of the first movies to deal with the brave new world of computers: A gang of thieves would reprogram the newly computerized traffic system of Turin, Italy, in order to pull off a gold heist. While the entire city choked in traffic, a single corridor would provide the escape route.

That was the basic plot, but when you saw the movie (I watched it again last week after a 30-year gap), it was all the stuff going on in the background that grabbed you.

The script, by a young Brit named Troy Kennedy Martin, brilliantly captured the hypocrisies and contradictions of swinging London, circa 1969 -- the class tensions, the sexual rebellion, the Carnaby Street garishness. Though the caper was led by a working-class bumbler played by Michael Caine, its mastermind was none other than Noel Coward, cast as a regal criminal who managed to sustain his baronial life style in a London prison, faithfully keeping his photo of the Queen on the wall of his cell.

To Martin and his uniquely eccentric young director, Peter Collinson, the tensions between the British thieves and their Italian counterparts represented a metaphor for the budding capitalist rivalries gripping Western Europe.

"The script may have been about robbing a bank, but to Michael Caine and the rest of us, it was really about stealing money from Hollywood," Martin said. "Suddenly the studios had discovered British filmmaking, and big money was flowing and we were all determined to get in on the action."

Martin gave his script of "The Italian Job" to Caine, who passed it on to Robert Evans, who in turn gave it to me. Since Evans and I sparked to it, he instantly closed a deal with the writer while they were riding up 35 floors in the Paramount elevator in New York. Evans also elicited a promise from his friend, Gianni Agnelli, the king of Fiat, to help us secure Turin as the site of the cosmic traffic jam.

It seemed like the movie started shooting instantly, even before a proper ending was agreed upon (the final one was shot over the objections of Collinson). When it opened, there were no lines around the block, but the $3 million film was a box office success and ultimately went on to become a cult movie.

The new incarnation of "The Italian Job" did not have as easy a path. For 10 years a succession of producers presided over a succession of scripts. Evans himself approached the studio with an idea for a remake -- he even had Agnelli's backing once again -- but the studio demurred. Working Title worked on the script for awhile, but after three sets of writers Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan decided the studio just didn't see it their way.

Three years ago Donald De Line decided to take a stab at it. He went through several drafts but he, too, found that while everyone liked the general idea, no one could agree on its precise execution. Until now, that is.

The script that will finally go into production in August will be directed by F. Gary Gray, who did "The Negotiator," and the cast will include Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton and Charlize Theron.

Though partially set in Italy, involving a short chase on the Venice canals, the big caper will be staged in Los Angeles, not Turin. The comedic elements will be toned down, the action dialed up. There will be no Noel Coward or Benny Hill. But there may be some inspired product placements for BMW's new line of minis.

"I think it will be a very hip caper movie," says De Line, with a producer's optimism. At the same time, it will clearly be a post-2000 movie, not an idiosyncratic product of the '60s.

After all, times change. What remains to be seen, of course, is whether a product of the '60s can or should be slotted into the 2002 pipeline.

Are remakes an homage or a vulgarization? Stay tuned

CHARADING:  A reader wrote in over the weekend with some doubts about Mark Wahlberg and the Jon Demme remake of Charade, due in October.  So I asked a friend of the film to speak to the issue and what came back, I thought, was worth printing: 

“Regarding CHARLIE:  The thing is, it's mistaken to say that Wahlberg is playing the "Cary Grant role."  CHARLIE is, unashamedly, an affectionate updating of "Charade," but Demme made some fundamental alterations right from the get-go:  Grant was 59 to Hepburn's 34 when they shot "Charade." Wahlberg and Newton are within a year of each other.  Their dynamic wasn't ever intended to faithfully re-create the June/September romance in the original.

Also, the entire central relationship has been inverted:  Netwon's Regina Lambert is now a more active, driven part of the action, with Wahlberg's Joshua Peters often chasing after, in pursuit of her.   The whole thing is grittier and edgier than "Charade," but still a lot of fun and boasts typical old-school Demme flourishes:  great music, energetic direction, interesting secondary and tertiary characters played by "where'd they find HIM/HER" people . . .”

Just to add my two cents, The Truth About Charlie is another film with a delayed release date, an issue discussed in the next story.  However, like The Bourne Identity, the delay was really about the filmmaker getting the movie finished the way he wanted it finished.  There was some pissy writing around Bourne and that has turned out to be one of the summer’s biggest critical and commercial success stories.   In many ways, Doug Liman has a chance to become his generation’s Jon Demme.  And Demme himself is, like Gus Van Sant and Barbet Schroeder, a filmmaker who makes the most commercial projects interesting.  (If he had only cut 20 minutes out of the very underrated Beloved)  So I am hoping for – and expecting- the best.

Eleven-year-old Daniel Radcliffe, already waxing nostalgic about his role as the young
wizard-in-training, is "lifelike to the point it's spooky," according to the Museum's wax artist Paul
Barnes. The biggest challenge? "His eyes," says Barnes. "We had to bring in a pediatric
ophthalmologist to help us create his baby blues with the focus and depth of the real thing." The
spellbinding Hogwarts student is the Museum's fourth figure of age 12 or under, joining Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker, Macaulay Culkin as Home Alone's Kevin McCallister and Shirley Temple.

A different kind of magic brought Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man to life in the 2002 blockbuster. "Creating a real-life wax likeness of a digitally-created character is a challenge. Our team spent 200 hours molding the body and another 150 hours to paint and finish him," according to Barnes. The buff web-slinger will capture attention in the Wax Museum's front lobby as he is poised to cast a spidery trap for the Green Goblin. Peter Parker's alter ego rounds out the Museum's trio of super heroes, with Superman (Christopher Reeve) and Batman (Michael Keaton) already amazing visitors.

Leaving the jungle of Spider-Man's home in Queens, NY, guests will find the eerie Sug Jungle, where General Thade (Tim Roth) and Colonel Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan) are stalking humankind's hero Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) and his primate friend Krull (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). Barnes says a special needle was used for the time-consuming job of inserting hair, one strand at a time. "Mark (Wahlberg), has about 8,000 hairs on his head, but that was nothing compared to the three apes. Their bodies, faces, and heads had to be plunged with more than 500,000 hairs."

This summer, visitors can see the Hollywood Wax Museum as part of a Triple Star Deal, which includes the Hollywood Guinness World Records Museum and a new guided walking tour, Hollywood Revealed: An Insider's Look by Foot. Call 323.462.5991. 

SOURCE: Hollywood Wax Museum 

Of course, it wasn't really Lipton, but "Saturday Night Live's" Will Ferrell doing his dead-on impersonation of the sonorous Lipton at a Museum of Modern Art gala April 10 in honor of helmer Russell.

Benefit -- the last official fete before the museum temporarily relocates to Queens -- saluted Russell, whose three pics were recently acquired by the museum. "He's edgy, funny, tough and meaningful," said Mary Lea Bandy, chief curator org's film and media department. "Someone who has a record of doing penetrating, truthful movies."

Thesp Lily Tomlin moderated a discussion of the helmer's oeuvre. "Tonight we're here to parry," she said to the guest of honor. "And I suppose you'll do the thrusting."

Evening's highlight was the surprise appearance of Ferrell as Lipton who invited alums of Russell's films onstage and referred to Richard Jenkins, Mary Tyler Moore, Patricia Arquette, Glenn Fitzgerald, Spike Jonze, Mark Wahlberg, Carla Gallo and Alberta Watson as "the greatest assemblage of actors ever -- including those in the future."

At the adjacent Sette Moma after-party, an exuberant Russell held court as friends and fans approached to pay tribute. When asked who should join him in the museum's pantheon, he slyly named colleagues "Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne, Michele Gondry, Kim Pierce and Gavin O'Connor -- who else is a director here tonight?"

Others in attendance: Sandra Bernhardt, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman, Sofia Coppola, Rhys Ifans, Ben Chaplin, and "SNL" castmembers Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudoph and Rachel Dratch.

A few years ago, Sony was shooting Godzilla -- same premise, same giant lizard -- but insisted it wasn't a remake, because the original took place in Tokyo, but this version was set in New York. Producers don't like to seem derivative, but want the comfort and convenience of recycling old chestnuts. And as remakes are flooding the studios, Broadway is seeing a deluge of revivals. In both cases, the impulse is the same: to minimize risk and to tap into the tried-and-true. 

Will Citizen Kane be next? 

Recycling old movies never goes out of style in Hollywood, but in the funhouse mirror of the contempo studio system, nothing is safe from a remake. Not even previous remakes. 

There are a glut of redo's germinating around town, a list that includes Harvey, Charade, Suspicion, Freaky Friday, Barbarella, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dawn of the Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

Studios have reason to be confident in the genre, considering last year's flashy remakes of Ocean's 11 and Planet of the Apes, which together grossed more than $360 million in the U.S. alone. 

And while Hollywood has always embraced remakes, there are new incentives. 

With soaring development and production costs, the studios' corporate parents have given filmmakers the mandate to pump out blockbuster franchises. So they're turning to studios' libraries for a trove of free, pre-branded material. 

Of course, studios are not the only sectors of showbiz that are cannibalizing the past. 

Nearly half of the debuting shows on Broadway this year are revivals (see separate story). On TV, the WB is remaking old skeins like Family Affair and The Lone Ranger. The soundtrack O Brother Where Art Thou? an anthology of 1920s roots music, has sold more than 4 million copies and just nabbed six Grammys. 

The studios' nostalgia trip covers a wide spectrum of remake strategies. 

They range from Universal's Mummy franchise (which reimagined a 1930s fright-fest as a gaudy, special-effects-driven romp) to Gus Van Sant's Psycho, also for U, which used the same Joseph Stefano script as the 1960 Hitchcock thriller. 

And then there are the U.S. remakes of foreign-lingo films (Vanilla Sky being the most recent example). 

And even sequels: Though technically not remakes, many of them use the same characters, situations and dilemmas as the earlier pic. (Can anyone distinguish between Lethal Weapon II and III?) 

And it's not just remakes, but remakes of remakes. Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, already filmed three times, is again in development at Warners. 

A seventh version of The Four Feathers is due this year from Miramax. MGM and Miramax are remaking Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, The Seven Samurai, which served as the template for 1960's The Magnificent Seven, among other films. 

Kurosawa's Rashomon, remade as the 1964 Paul Newman oater Outrage, also is getting another life at Hollywood shingle Harbor Light Entertainment; and Here Comes Mr. Jordan, the source for 1978's Heaven Can Wait, was remade last year as the Chris Rock laffer, Down to Earth. 

This penchant for going back to the well dates back to Hollywood's early days (several silent versions of The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, etc.). Errol Flynn's 1938 Robin Hood was the sixth iteration of the story. 

Brushing up on film history can take studios in new directions, says U Pictures chair Stacey Snider. The Coen brothers are remaking a U library title, Roland Neame's 1966 romantic caper, Gambit, which Snider says will breathe new life into the genre. 

"There was a feeling that we loved romantic comedies, but were tired of its conventions," says Snider. "I personally have been involved in a lot of romantic comedies. You love seeing Julia Roberts or Cameron Diaz and talented and hunky guys in a movie together, but you want to do a movie that's not just 'Will he or won't he?' " 

Producers are adamant that their new version of an oldie is different or better or both. 

Dino De Laurentiis insists U's Red Dragon, the second adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel, is not a remake. The 1986 Manhunter didn't follow the book as closely, he says. 

Arnold Kopelson, who's developing Strangers on a Train at Warners, says it's not a remake, but a reconceptualization of the Patricia Highsmith novel. 

Either way, a familiar title has additional firepower for producers in pitch meetings with jaded studio execs. 

Art Linson writes in his forthcoming memoir What Just Happened, that he knew a new Great Expectations would be irresistible for a studio. "Studios love famous titles. I knew that when the marketing and development executives realized the movie already had a built-in awareness, they would get all warm and fuzzy." 

RKO Pictures CEO Ted Hartley agrees. "It makes the whole development process easier. It allows people sitting around a table to focus better on what the movie is going to be." 

Hartley, who oversees a library of 1,100 features and 600 unmade screenplays, occupies a Century City office decked out with Hollywood artifacts like a spear from King Kong and the sled from Citizen Kane. 

RKO is "remake central," says advisor Thomas Mount, developing its own library projects like the Fritz Lang thriller Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and partnering with studios on others, including Suspicion (set up at Dimension) and Richest Girl In the World (Fox). 

Fueling the remake trend is the globalization of foreign cinema and the proliferation of international co-productions. 

The huge success of Three Men and a Baby, based on the 1985 French Trois Hommes et un Couffin, opened the floodgates for Hollywood versions of foreign titles. Today, scores of producers travel the fest circuit, prospecting for new ideas. 

Producers like Victor Drai led the wave of Gallic-to-U.S. remakes that followed Three Men; many of them ran aground when their fragile, whimsical premises proved largely unsuited to American auds. 

But the cycle is on the upturn again as studios are finding inspiration in Asian, European and South American films for remake possibilities. 

Intermedia Films co-chair Guy East likens that process to selling antiques: "When I was a kid, I'd go around to garage sales, find old brass and copper, polish it up, and present it to a new antique shop, where it would be much more valuable." 

Intermedia is doing much the same thing with European films, says East, developing American adaptations of Sleepwalker, a Norwegian thriller that Nicholas Kazan will script and Joel Schumacher will direct, and the German Das Experiment, which Baltimore/Spring Creek has come on board to co-produce. 

That doesn't mean a remake is a sure thing. 

Hollywood insiders point to MGM's unsuccessful remake of the '70s actioner Rollerball as a project that lost its identity in the development process. And Paramount's 1995 remake of Sabrina is an example of an unsuccessful attempt to replicate earlier magic (which in that case came largely from helmer Billy Wilder and star Audrey Hepburn). 

Plus there is the kneejerk backlash from fans of the original. One observer describes The Truth About Charlie, Jonathan Demme's Charade remake at U, as "pure insanity. You can't beat Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It's a waste of everybody's time." 

Demme defends his film, saying he's not trying to compete with the Stanley Donen original. 

"It's not a contest in my mind," he says. "We didn't try to better Charade. But we did try to turn it upside down and bring it up to the 21st century. There are a lot of opportunities to suck up the goodies of the movie and make a wildly entertaining picture."

But plenty of producers are convinced they can improve on the original. 

Kopelson, who remade another Hitchcock pic, Dial M For Murder as the Michael Douglas thriller, A Perfect Murder, says "With all humility, I think Perfect Murder is a far better movie, considering the size of our movie, the look, the set design, and Michael Douglas's performance." 

Kopelson says Strangers is "almost a perfect movie but it's dated and older and I think there's an audience for the movie today." 

Warner Bros. and U boast two of the largest libraries in town, 6500 and 9000, respectively, so that for both studios remakes are a way of turning languishing resources into assets that Wall Street can appreciate. 

Remakes have become an explicit part of the corporate strategy at U; after the company was purchased by Vivendi, journalists and analysts were shown studio briefing books, which talked about plans to mine company vaults for remake opportunities. 

Chris McGurk says he brought the U strategy with him when he moved to MGM to become vice chairman. Recently, the Lion created a theatrical entertainment division charged with finding ways to make stage properties from its library. 

"You can develop these properties a hell of a lot cheaper and smarter," McGurk says. "Every dollar you can earn in a library project is as green as any other dollar." 

Filmmakers have begun to see the remake possibilities in just about every film to come out of Hollywood. Even Citizen Kane, says Demme, isn't necessarily exempt. 

"Why not? If you can make a fantastic movie, and if you have a fantastic cast. It's not like you're pissing on the original by doing a remake." 

Planet of the Apes producer Richard Zanuck told SCI FI Wire that a sequel to the 2001 film will be delayed. Zanuck said that Fox told him that it does not want to exhaust the franchise with too many sequels right away. "The idea is to space it out now," Zanuck said in an interview. "The studio doesn't think that a sequel has to be made immediately. They made a lot of money off the picture, but the theory, at least what they're telling me, is that every three years or more [they will make one]."

After the first Planet of the Apes movie in 1968, four films sequels followed rapidly until 1973, as well as a TV series in 1974 and TV movies in 1975 and 1981. The series lay dormant for 20 years after that. "They don't want the franchise to just burn out and be finished again for another 20 years," Zanuck said. "I don't know whether they're right or not, but that seems to be the idea."

Zanuck said the next film could pick up right where the last one left off, with Leo Davidson's (Mark Wahlberg) further adventures on an ape world. "They have a deal with Mark Wahlberg in place, but I don't know what their ultimate plan is," Zanuck said.

LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Donald Sutherland is in negotiations and Seth Green is set to join the cast of Paramount Pictures' "The Italian Job" for director F. Gary Gray and studio-based DeLine Pictures. The project begins shooting next month. 

Scripted by Donna and Wayne Powers, "Job" is a remake of the 1969 Paramount release of the same name that starred Michael Caine and Benny Hill. The new version, a reinvention of the action-oriented heist movie, will be set in Italy and Los Angeles. It stars Mark Wahlberg as Charlie, the head of a robbery crew that stages a traffic jam in order to steal back a safe filled with gold that had been stolen by a double-crossing associate ( Edward Norton). 

Sutherland would play the pivotal role of Charlie's mentor and father to Charlie's love interest, Stella ( Charlize Theron). Green will play Lyle, a computer whiz who is part of Charlie's crew. Franky G. and Mos Def also star as members of the crew (HR 6/20). 

Sutherland, repped by CAA, most recently came aboard MGM/Miramax Films' "Cold Mountain." The actor most recently starred in HBO's "Path to War." 

Green, repped by UTA, manager Trice Koopman and attorney David Webber, next stars in New Line Cinema's "Austin Powers in Goldmember." The actor recently wrapped shooting the indie feature "Party Monster."