In the works: The Coens adapt Chabon, Tomei plays a stripper.

Trailer du jour: For "The Forbidden Kingdom," here. Director Rob Minkoff, of "The Lion King" and "Stuart Little," seems to have made an outrageous, unblushing asiaphile mash-up, with Jet Li playing a taciturn white-clad fightin' monk, Jackie Chan as a drunken kung-fu master, Li Bing Bing playing a variation on The Bride with White Hair, Liu Yifei as the Zhang Ziyi stand-in and "Snow Angels"' Michael Angarano as the inevitable white kid who learns martial arts, saves all of ancient China and makes the film palatable to a wider demographic.


In the works: The Coen brothers have their next project, after the already completed "Burn After Reading" and "A Serious Man" — they'll be adapting Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," a (quite, quite awesome) hardboiled detective story set in an alternate America in which the State of Israel crumbled in the late 40s and displaced Jews were offered Alaska as a temporary settlement. Thrilled! The winking, but actually deadly serious alternate history genre tale is almost too perfect a fit for the brothers C. [Variety]

Marisa Tomei has been cast as the female lead in Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler." She'll play a stripped to Mickey Rourke's retired pro wrestler. [Variety]

Lone Scherfig, the Danish filmmaker behind "Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself" and the Dogme film "Italian for Beginners," will direct "An Education." The film, adapted from a Lynn Barber essay published in Granta and adapted by Nick Hornby, will star Peter Sarsgaard (♥!) as dashing older man romancing a 17-year-old suburban girl (Carey Mulligan). [Hollywood Reporter]


Acquired: Our sister company IFC Films has picked up "Diminished Capacity," that Sundance Matthew Broderick/Alan Alda amnesia/senility road trip movie, for a yet unannounced release date. [Hollywood Reporter]

Magnolia has purchased the rights to another Sundance title, Brit horror film "Donkey Punch. (Our review from the festival is here.) [Hollywood Reporter]

Sony Pictures Classics has bought the rights to the Russian film "12," Nikita Mikhalkov's loose adaptation of "12 Angry Men"  and a nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. [Variety]

And the small distribution company Anywhere Road has picked up doc "A Very British Gangster," which premiered at Sundance last year and which traces the life of Brit crime lord Dominic Noonan. [Variety]

+ Trailer: "The Forbidden Kingdom" (Yahoo!)
+ Coens speak 'Yiddish' for Columbia (Variety)
+ Tomei joins Aronofsky's 'Wrestler' (Variety)
+ 'Education' gets four stars (Hollywood Reporter)
+ IFC picks up 'Capacity' (Hollywood Reporter)
+ Magnolia partying with 'Punch' (Hollywood Reporter)
+ Sony Classics bets on Russia's '12' (Variety)
+ Anywhere Road grabs 'Gangster' (Variety)