BY MAGDA MAPLETHORPE, ENTERTAINMENT DESK

SPIELBERG TO DIRECT?

HOLLYWOOD IS BUZZING with rumours that Tom Cruise will take the lead in a new epic about the Ukraine War.

Provisionally titled I Need Ammo Not a Ride after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s famous reply to an offer to fly him to safety following the Russian invasion of his country, the movie will take some liberties with real events in order to make it more accessible to an American Audience.

“Zelenskyy has to be an American,” says a studio insider. “Audiences just won’t wear some little clown from Eastern Europe as their hero. Anyway, there’s enough clowns in politics right here, right now. And we’re relocating the action to Texas, mainly for tax reasons. Think Red Dawn meets The Great Escape, with basically a Star Wars plot. Russia is the evil empire, naturally; Putin, Darth Vadar. And Zelenskyy is a kind of Hilts, the Cooler King from The Great Escape. Steve McQueen, where are you when we need you?

“Of course, if Tom’s not available, there’s always Liam Neeson, who has the added advantage of having played one of those Europeaners in Schindler’s List. Alan Rickman would have been the perfect Putin but he’s dead. So the thinking here is Mark Rylance. That Cromwell dude he plays, give him a modern wardrobe and he’s Putin.

“And if we can’t get any of them, there’s always Matt Damon. Yeah, there’s always Matt Damon.

“It’s exciting. We’re talking big budget. Four or five hundred million. CGI dripping off the screen. A muscled Zelenskyy leading his troops from the top of a tank – M1 Abrams of course – shirtless, firing an M60 in one hand and holding a Crocodile Dundee knife in the other. Saving America. With dialogue like: “Typical of a Ruski to bring a T52 to tank battle!

“How could Spielberg resist something like that?”

Other sources confirm that a script treatment is already in circulation. It’s said to be based on a Kurosawa film about Lesbian gangs in the Eighteenth Century Japan, with some minor changes for an American audience.

“Yes,” says Saul Weisenheimer, a Hollywood lawyer, “old K’s movie was in black and white, with the dialogue in Haiku, that Jap 3-line poetry, and it lasts nine hours. Actually, it’s so artistically perfect that if you play it in reverse you get a completely different movie. But none of that shit for us. We just want the action.

“And if Tombo’s doing it, then there have to be stunts, lots of stunts. So that’ll have to be written in.

“The plan is a six-week shoot, a month in post-production, and hopefully have it out for the summer blockbuster period and the Ukrainian counter-attack. Believe me, we’re mostly atheists around here but we’re praying for that counter-attack.”