Basic Instinct and Showgirls director Paul Verhoeven is making his first Hollywood film since 2000's Hollow Man.

Reuters reports:

The Dutch filmmaker is set to direct Pierce Brosnan in a sequel to the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.

Tentatively titled The Thomas Crown Affair 2, the MGM project is based on the 1964 movie Topkapi and the novel The Light of Day by Eric Ambler. It has been in development since 2002.

Ambler, who wrote The Light of Day in 1962, is thought by many to be the father of the contemporary spy novel, but think more Graham Greene than John Le Carre. The first of the two Brosnan Crown Affair movies was also based on The Light of Day, so what's left for the sequel remains to be seen.  read more »

The AP reported today that Pierce Brosnan is being investigated as the possible perpetrator in an assault, which allegedly took place outside of a Mexican restaurant in Malibu, Calif., where the 54-year-old Irish-born thespian resides with his family. A spokesman for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. identified the alleged victim as a certain Robert Rosen.

Calls to Mr. Brosnan’s publicist were reportedly not returned.

Brosnan Investigated in Alleged Assault [LA Times]

Late last night in the front room of O’Neals Restaurant at West 64th Street and Broadway, director Ira Sachs was explaining the importance of the New York Film Festival.

“A commitment to cinema—over a long period of time—as an art form,” the 42-year-old director said, was the hallmark of the festival, which for the first time was presenting his work, the film Married Life, starring Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Cooper and Rachel McAdams.

“To me, that’s something that’s been lost in the independent movement, which is something that I came out of, which is to think of film in the same context as a painting, or a photograph, or a ballet, or the Met, or whatever else it may be that is artful in cinema that is significant in itself,” Mr. Sachs said.  read more »