Novelist turned screenwriter Scott B. Smith has inked a doubloon-rich deal to update the 1961 Charlton Heston starrer "El Cid" for MGM Pictures. While no deal is in place, helmer Martin Campbell ("GoldenEye") is being eyed by the Lion.
This time around, it's not Samuel Bronston who'll produce, but MGM-based producer Arthur Sarkissian ("Rush Hour"). Sarkissian is also developing the blacktop basketball pic "The Street" with former MGM production prexy Alex Gartner at the studio, as well as a United Artists update -- a comedic remake of the 1958 Tony Curtis-Sidney Poitier prison break film, "The Defiant Ones."
Scott, who penned the thriller "A Simple Plan" in 1993, received an Academy Award nomination for his own adaptation of the novel in 1998, helmed for Par by Sam Raimi.
Anthony Mann's "Cid" received three Oscar noms, for art direction, score and song.
Epic follows Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar -- "El Cid" to his soldiers -- as he seeks to rid 11th-century Spain of its Moorish invaders. "Cid's" development is being overseen by MGM production VP Quentin Curtis.
Smith was repped in the deal by the Lynn Pleshette Literary Agency.
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