Antonio Banderas reiterated his interest Thursday in taking a starring role in futuristic film noir Tarantula for director Pedro Almodovar.

Speaking at a press conference in Madrid for Imagining Argentina, the film he is currently shooting in Spain and Argentina, Banderas said he had Tarantula scheduled for 2004 in his busy film slate.

However, sources at Almodovar's production outfit El Deseo said no concrete plans for the film have yet been made. Tarantula is one of three scripts the director has in development, alongside La Mala Educacion, a semi-autobiographical story about two boys in Spain's Catholic school system in the 1960's and 1970's, and a comedy being referred to as Women And Airports (Mujeres Y Aeropuertos).

It is undecided which of the three will be Almodovar's next film, but none would move into production until well into next year, the sources say.

Almodovar will spend the next few months promoting his new film Talk To Her (Hable Con Ella), which premieres in the US at the New York Film Festival (Sept 27-Oct 13).

Almodovar optioned the rights more than a year ago to Tarantula, an obscure French novel about a plastic surgeon in the year 2010 or 2015 who takes revenge on his daughter's rapist by giving him a forced sex-change operation.