Last season’s Oscar rivals, Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep, are attached to the untitled Michael Patrick King (Sex and the City) project recently acquired by Universal. And if that weren’t enough star-power, Oprah Winfrey will also appear. In the comedy, set around a home-shopping TV channel, the three ladies “make their way through the maze of mania that surrounds marketing, marriages and the media,” according to a Universal statement.

Tea Leoni will reunite with her Family Man director Brett Ratner for his upcoming action-comedy Tower Heist, according to Deadline.com. Leoni will portray an FBI agent who falls in love with Ben Stiller’s manager character, who’s planning a heist. Eddie Murphy, Gabourey Sidibe, Michael Pena, and Alan Alda are also set to appear in Heist.

Director James Cameron is tapping his Avatar executive producer/writer Laeta Kalogridis for his next project, the remake of the 1966 sci-fi classic Fantastic Voyage, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Specifically, Kalogridis, who wrote Shutter Island for Martin Scorsese, will work on rewrites for the script, which has already been worked on by various Hollywood writers. Voyage is the story of a group of scientists who, after being shrunk and put inside a tiny submarine, are sent into the body of another scientist to save his life.

Hangover 2 helmer Todd Phillips has released a statement via Warner Bros., and Legendary Pictures that says Mel Gibson will not be appearing in the sequel to the 2009 hit comedy after all. “I thought Mel would have been great in the movie and I had the full backing of Jeff Robinov and his team,” Phillips says in the statement. “But I realize filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and this decision did not ultimately have the full support of my entire cast and crew.”

Just last week, sources confirmed with EW that the controversial Gibson would appear in the film as “an outlandish character, à la Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.” Gibson’s rep is not commenting on the actor being dropped from the film.

Read more:
Mel Gibson to cameo in ‘Hangover 2′
Jodie Foster on The Beaver and Mel Gibson
Gibson’s domestic violence case goes to prosecutors
‘Hangover 2′ to get Bangkok dangerous
‘Hangover 2′ photos surface: One of these Zach Galifianakis shirts is… just like the others
‘Hangover 2′ without Heather Graham… Yeah, we’re okay with that

New Line released a statement today to clarify that although actors’ unions had abandoned their boycott of The Hobbit, the studio might still seek a location other than New Zealand for its enormous productions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings prequels. “NZ Equity/MEAA continued to demand, as a condition of the retractions, that we participate in union negotiations with the independent contractor performers,” read the statement. “We have refused to do so, and will continue to do so. The actions of these unions have caused us substantial damage and disruption and forced us to consider other filming locations for the first time. Alternative locations are still being considered.”