Zeta-Jones in like "Flint" on spy thriller
Source: yahoo.com

By Michael Fleming

NEW YORK (Variety) - Catherine Zeta-Jones will star in "Flint," a Sony Pictures adaptation of the Paul Eddy bestseller. Zeta-Jones and her brother and partner Lyndon Jones will join Red Wagon Entertainment partners Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher in producing the thriller.

They have hired screenwriter Michael Cooney, who just wrote "I.D." for Columbia.

Husband-and-wife Wick and Fisher bought the book two years ago, long before it became a bestseller. Title character Grace Flint is a female British intelligence agent who is brutally beaten and disfigured while on assignment to infiltrate a money-laundering operation. Her face is rebuilt through reconstructive surgery and when she heals, looking completely different, she resurfaces as an undercover M15 agent, renewing her efforts to nail her attackers and their covert scheme. Zeta-Jones has shown her athletic prowess in "Entrapment," where many felt that a marketing campaign highlighted by her slithering under laser lights, was largely responsible for turning the movie into a hit.

"Catherine is the perfect Grace Flint," said Sony production president Peter Schlessel.

Wick said Zeta-Jones gives them the opportunity to make the spy character "very formidable and very female."

Zeta-Jones, who recently wrapped the Miramax musical "Chicago" and is currently starring with George Clooney in the Coen brothers-directed "Intolerable Cruelty" at Universal, sparked to the character and the chance to bring her Milkwood Films banner into the mix.

"I love the story, the character of Flint and being a part of the process form the beginning," she said.

The emergence of Zeta-Jones puts another Red Wagon pic on the fast track. Wick and Fisher are coming off "Stuart Little 2," and are now in pre-production on the live-action "Peter Pan" for Revolution/Sony/Universal, and are working on "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Fertig" and "Dreadnought."