* Tom Cruise may or may not be many things, but I’ve never really thought of him as a rocker. Yet, that’s exactly what he will be in the promised film version of “Rock of Ages.” I’ve long had mixed feelings about Cruise as an actor — he can be very good in some things and disastrous in others — and I have mixed feelings about this project, too. To be specific, I like good movie musicals but strongly dislike eighties hair bands and what some of us used to call “corporate rock.”

On the other hand, Mike Fleming touts Anne Hathaway, who I have few or no mixed feelings about, as a possible costar. I wonder what she’d look like as a glam rocker…

* A star has been set — or at least gotten to the serious negotiation stage — for the long discussed “Jack the Giant Killer” coming from Bryan Singer and his old screenwriting cohort, Christopher McQuarrie, writes Mike Fleming. He’s that kid who was so great in 2002’s “About a Boy” grown-up into 20-something Nicolas Hoult. Hoult has also appeared on the UK “Skins” and will be turning up in the upcoming “Mad Max” reboot/sequel or whatever.

Mike Fleming, however, is not correct when he describes the tale as a “scary” variation on “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It’s an entirely different, far less commonly told, fairy tale. As Wikipedia tells us:

Jack the Giant Killer is a British fairy tale about a plucky Cornish lad who slays a number of giants during King Arthur’s reign. The tale is characterized by violence, gore, and blood-letting.

No wonder they’re making a movie of it.

* Gerard Butler is going surfing with the supremely cool Curtis Hanson, who’ll be directing him in “Mavericks.” It’s a reality-inspired story that, Kevin Jagernauth reminds us, also calls for a tragic hero in his late teens and/or early twenties. I wonder if Nicolas Hoult might want to continue the growing tradition of really skilled young British actors stealing parts from Americans with their flawless U.S. accents, superior discipline, and all. He actually already did just that with his small but pivotal role as an Angeleno student who turns Colin Firth’s head in last year’s excellent “A Single Man.”

* Somebody at Marvel and Paramount must like what they’re seeing in “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Writers Stephen McFeeley and Christopher Markus have been hired to write a sequel already. On the other hand, sequels are kind of the point of these movies, I’m afraid. According to IMDb, the pair will be sharing screen credit for the first film with Joss Whedon, who was hired to do a polish on the script last year, but we’ll see what reality and the Writer’s Guild have to say about that.

* Ryan Gosling just turned 30 last year, and he looks younger than that. So that makes him the perfect age for a new version of “Logan’s Run,” about a future where radical population control means that no one makes it past 30. Since thoughtful, genre-friendly Alex Garland is writing the screenplay this time, I trust this version will hew a little closer to the original novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson than the seriously mediocre 1976 film version. Still, in the book no one made it past 21. If they decide to be really faithful, maybe Nicolas Hoult would be available. He turned 21 last December.

* Megan Ellison, 25-year old daughter of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is apparently dropping her billionaire playgirl persona to become not a buttkicking superhero, but a buttkicking film financier, says The Vulture. She’s apparently saving Paul Thomas Anderson’s endangered possibly-about-Scientology film, possibly called “The Master,” which is possibly about a lead character who is legally probably not based on L. Ron Hubbard. She also might be helping out with the moolah for what I think would be the first film adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel if it ever happens, “Inherent Vice.” Something tells me Tom Cruise won’t be stepping aside from “Rock of Ages” to appear in either film, though he was in Anderson’s “Magnolia,” of course.

* Speaking of actual Scientology, the highly litigious and, many believe, highly dangerous to cross Hollywood-centric religion-cum-self-help movement, got its biggest unwanted public airing out in some time this week. I speak of a terrific investigative piece in the new issue of The New Yorker. The hugely compelling and informative 26-page article by Lawrence Wright focuses on the experience of screenwriter and director Paul Haggis (“Million Dollar Baby,” “Crash“), formerly one of the church’s best known below-the-line members. Highly recommended.

* I’ve had fellow entertainment journos confess to me they’re really tired of writing items about James Franco contemplating a seemingly endless number of possible new projects. The guy’s career is on fire and considering that he’s currently pursuing a PHd while getting ready to host the Oscars and appearing just about everywhere in support of “127 Hours,” and presumably taking innumerable meetings and doing lord-knows-what-else, he’s clearly not the kind of person who worries about overextending himself. Nevertheless, I have to wonder about how serious the rumor is about him playing a role in the upcoming live action film version of the manga classic, “Akira.” He’s still young and everything, but if memory serves I kind of had the impression that all the characters were teenagers. Of course, in manga and anime, everyone under 45 looks like they’re 15. Still, Franco better start taking it easier and get his beauty rest if he doesn’t want to lose the part to someone who looks really young like, say, Nicolas Hoult.

* Domestic ticket sales for movies this year are expected to top a whopping $10 billion, I guess proving the old adage that the relatively cheap entertainment of movies is a good business to be in tough economic times. If a studio exec takes you to lunch, you have my permission to order an appetizer.

* The Wall Street Journal has anecdotal reports of kids asking Santa for items like socks, school shoes, and eyeglasses. The recession affects everyone. So, out goes the glitz, in comes the chic intimate soirees for Hollywood awards promotion which still sound bloody expensive to me. But, note the item above. Also, it’s not like all that money would go to charity if they weren’t having the parties. It keeps caterers and bartenders working.

* In a move that could impact both the cable TV and movie business in a fairly big way, highly lauded former HBO head Chris Albrecht is joining Starz TV and will oversee new original content there. Nikki Finke has the (self-confirmed) scoop. Albrecht, who had been at HBO for 22 years, lost his job in 2007 when he was arrested after a violent public incident with his girlfriend, which he blamed on a relapse in his recovery as an alcoholic. La Finke says his personal problems are behind him; I’m certain the Starz folks think that’s true.

* “X-Men” movie fans will want to check out this interview with Bryan Singer.  After seeing “Avatar,” he’s contemplating whether or not to do his “Jack, the Giant Killer” in 3-D.

* Anne Thompson has some interesting, if somewhat in-the-weeds, details on the fall out of the Dreamworks/Paramount divorce.

* There’s an old joke along that lines of “that movie wasn’t released, it escaped!” Well, apparently the new Kevin Costner supernatural thriller is being given a token release that’s practically a state secret. So says the Playlist. I’m not convinced he’s washed up, though I suppose his leading man days could be more or less behind him and his character actor days ahead of him — but another old joke, updated: the four stages of an actor’s career. “Who’s Kevin Costner?” “Get me Kevin Costner!” “Get me a young Kevin Costner! “Who’s Kevin Costner?”

For a contrasting, somewhat NSFW, point of view, see below.

* Via Merrick at THR.

New Line has picked up a pitch from Darren Lemke, the writer behind the studio’s Bryan Singer project “Jack the Giant Killer,” that reimagines the classic tale of “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” as an action-adventure movie.

I’m thinking Steven Seagall for the lead, with Jet Li as Kato, though I’m not sure how either of them are at dancing to the music of Tchaikovsky. Okay, actually, this version won’t be a ballet  (obviously) and they’re going for more of a “Chronicles of Narnia” vibe.

* Brad Pitt will be producing, but not playing the lead, in an action-oriented flick about the young Vlad Dracul (his buddies call him “the Impaler”). I’d prefer if they would be honest and call this “Dracula Begins,” but the actual title is “Vlad.” The studio will be the “Twilight” driven Summit. How much you wanna bet this vampire-to-be has a tortured love-life?

* Hand drawn animation appears to be coming back to Disney in a big way. Yay. Film-maker Brendon Connolly has some interesting hints.

* And one more item from THR/Heat Vision that I can’t really ignore. Cowriter-producer Peter Jackson has announced that auditions for “The Hobbit” have begun and the only role that’s precast is Ian McKellan as Gandalf. So, actors, if you’ve got a snub nose, a pasty complexion, are never chosen first for basketball, and have hairy feet, I suggest you get into gear. They are denying rumors that James McAvoy could be in the running for Bilbo, though he does have an overall Baggins thing going on, I think. Another actor who screams “hobbit!” to me is writer Peter Morgan’s favorite star, Michael Sheen of “Frost/Nixon,” “The Queen,” and “The Damned United.” Of course, whoever it is, I guess it will have to believable that he’ll look like Ian Holm when he gets on in years.

* In my box-office wrap-up yesterday, I wrote the following:

“2012” cost $200 million to make, a rather obscene sum that was unthinkable not so long ago, and in four weeks in wide release has earned a mere $148,787,000. I haven’t seen “The Blind Side,” but it just makes me happy that a modest movie about people is proving, I think, to be significantly more profitable than at least one pretty obviously bloated spectacle.

I really hope that readers understood I was talking about the domestic gross. Internationally, the Roland Emmerich feature has earned upwards of $650 million. However, as Sharon Waxman reports, Emmerich will be taking home a good percentage of that  — a cool $100 million (half the film’s outlandish budget, in fact) — for himself to share with whomever he’s going to share it with. From a studio’s point of view, at least, I still can’t help but wonder if “The Blind Side” will turn out to be the better deal.

* The lovely and extremely talented Amy Adams is pregnant and bowing out of the newest film from director John Hillcoat (“The Road“) and his collaborator on “The Proposition,” screenwriter and Aussie alternative music legend Nick Cave, writes the Playlist. The film is currently set the star the powerful twosome of Ryan Gosling and Shia LaBouef, who will be playing brothers and prohibition-era bootleggers.

* Overture has picked up the rights to “Stone,” an all-star thriller to be headlined by Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, and Milla Jovovich. Not mentioned in the Variety piece, however, is that, as per If Magazine, actor Enver Gjokaj will be playing De Niro as a young man  in what I gather are some fairly significant flashback sequences. Very coincidentally, I praised Gjokaj’s work on Joss Whedon’s TV show, “Dollhouse” to the skies yesterday in this epic-length “best of” feature. The hard-to-pronounce Gjokaj doesn’t particularly look like De Niro, but regular viewers of the show know what a gifted chameleon the all but unknown young theater-bred actor really is. I’m guessing the audience will assume he’s De Niro’s son. Let’s just hope he has some good show-biz luck to match his obvious abilities. (H/t Whedonesque.)

* A.J. Schnack smacks down a really stupid idea, and specifically the L.A. Times coverage of it, way better than I did. He also has a to-the-point comment by documentarian Chuck Braverman.

* Considering the press-release-cum-advertorial tone of this piece, Screenrant appears to be involved in some way with with Movie Clips, a new service providing thousands of visually very high quality movie excerpts which has made licensing deals with the studios. It’s still very much in beta, but, poking around a bit, I found some nice scenes, but it’s a far, far cry from YouTube in terms of depth and variety, though the consistent quality of the visuals are very nice.

As an example, I tried a search for “Citizen Kane” and found nothing. So, I tried Orson Welles, and I got two scenes from the far from the disastrous 1967 production of “Casino Royale” — not exactly a key Welles (or Peter Sellers) moment in anyone’s view. Still, it looks pretty…or it would, if I could get it to embed properly. Oh well, you can see the clip here.