03.27.08: Meet George 'W's Parents, Clooney Feels The 'Burn' & Maguire Gets 'Afterburn'

Oliver Stone is casting thick and fast on W, his fact-based foray into the formative years of George W. Bush. Having just hired Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush, the tyro director has now set James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn to play George Herbert Walker Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush. Shooting on Stone's drama kicks off at the end of April in Shreveport, Louisiana. More at Variety

Clooney Feels The Burn
George Clooney chats about his baffling role in the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men follow-up Burn After Reading. “I don’t even understand what it is,” says Clooney. “The only thing I feel confident about is, as bad and goofy and dim as I am in the movie, Brad [Pitt] might be dimmer.” More at MTV Movies

Maguire Gets Afterburn
Tobey Maguire has acquired the rights to produce an adaptation of the comic-book Afterburn through his company Maguire Entertainment, in cahoots with producer Neal Moritz (The Fast And The Furious, I Am Legend). The first issue of Afterburn hit stands in January and is set against the backdrop of a postapocalyptic Earth that’s been devastated by a massive solar flare, with a group of mercenary treasure hunters pitted against radiated mutants and pirates in a race to find priceless objects like the Mona Lisa and the Rosetta Stone. More at The Hollywood Reporter

Parker “Conflicted” About Sex And The City Cannes Screening
Sarah Jessica Parker isn’t so sure that screening the Sex And The City movie at the Cannes Film Festival, as has been heavily rumoured, is such a great idea, coming as it would only a week or two before the movie unrolls across the world. She’s worried the top-secret ending will leak out and ruin it for “those men and women who really stuck with us, who don’t want to know the ending…” More at Risky Biz