Zac Efron, who recently passed on Paramount’s remake of Footloose, is currently negotiating with New Line/Warner Bros. to star in an adaptation of the novel "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud,” according to Variety.

Efron will play a cemetery caretaker who communes with his dead brother, whose death he feels he caused. Based on the novel by Ben Sherwood, a former producer at Good Morning America, and helmed by Efron’s 17 Again director Burr Steers, the film is scheduled for a July start date.

Blockbuster and TiVo have partnered for a new service that will enable customers to download titles from the rental giant’s online movie library for viewing on their televisions, Reuters reports. The agreement, which will make some 10,000 movies available for download later this year, places Blockbuster alongside Netflix and Amazon.com as content providers using TiVo to bring video straight to users’ TVs. The agreement also calls for Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar stores to sell TiVo DVRs.

Vanessa Redgrave will join Ridley Scott’s long-in-the-works untitled Robin Hood project, which is ramping up production in the U.K., according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Oscar-winning actress will play Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine in the movie, which stars Russell Crowe as Robin Hood and Cate Blanchett as Lady Marian.

This marks the first major role announced for Redgrave following the sudden passing of her daughter, Natasha Richardson, after a skiing accident last week. On Monday, EW reported that Redgrave’s April 27 New York theater performance of the one-woman show The Year of Magical Thinking has been postponed in the wake of Richardson’s death.

Walt Disney Pictures is set to release Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated film, Ponyo, on Aug. 14, the studio says. The movie, which follows a goldfish that longs to become human, has assembled an English voice cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman, Liam Nesson, Lily Tomlin, Betty White, Frankie Jonas (the youngest Jonas brother), and Noah Cyrus (younger sister of Miley). The English-language version is being produced by John Lasseter, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall, with a translated screenplay by Melissa Mathison (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial). Ponyo was released in Japan last July and grossed $165 million.

Slumdog Millionaire‘s Freida Pinto has joined the cast of director Julian Schnabel’s Miral, Variety reports. The film, an adaptation of Rula Jebreal’s book, documents the true story of Hind Husseini, the woman who created the Dar Al-Tifi orphanage in Jerusalem in 1948 when the state of Israel came into existence. Palestinian actress Hiam Abbas (The Visitor) will play Husseini. Schnabel will shoot the movie in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with a release scheduled for 2010.