Having exploded onto the Hollywood scene with upcoming US titles such as Steven Spielberg's Minority Report and Bruce Willis WW2 drama Hart's War, red-hot Irish actor Colin Farrell is likely to return to home-grown features on Dublin-set ensemble piece Intermission.

The 25 year-old actor, who this week purportedly landed $5m to star opposite Al Pacino in Spyglass' The Farm, is in talks to board Intermission after hitting it off with its writer, the acclaimed young Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe. The story of interweaving lives, set up at Neil Jordan and Stephen Woolley's Company Of Wolves, is likely to be a hard-hitting homecoming: the playwright is renowned for his stories of violent, drunken hard-men and fierce, chopped language in plays such as Howie The Rookie, which recently played off-Broadway.

Richard Cook of Farrell's Irish agent, the Lisa Richards Agency, said "there are a number of options" as to which part Farrell could play. He added that the prospects of a deal were "looking good", although nothing is finalised.

"There are definitely talks," he said. "It's a fantastic script."

Directed by John Crowley, the project is expected to shoot later this year or early 2002, with Jordan, Woolley and Parallel Films' Alan Moloney producing. Company Of Wolves has a deal with DreamWorks, although financing on Intermission is unclear.

Intermission would mark Farrell's first local feature since 1999's Ordinary Decent Criminal, after which his performance in Joel Schumacher's Tigerland (pictured) propelled him into the US limelight. Alongside Tigerland, Hart's War and Minority Report, his rapidly multiplying US credits include Schumacher's Phone Booth and American Outlaws, which opens on Friday. He is also reportedly looking at playing Dean Moriarty in the film version of Jack Kerouac's On The Road which Francis Ford Coppola has been developing.

Company Of Wolves now looks set to shoot Actors, written and directed by another of Ireland's hot young playwrights, Conor McPherson, at roughly the same as Intermission. Alan Rickman and Dylan Moran are to star in the project, McPherson's second feature after Saltwater, with shooting scheduled for February 2002.

The London and Ireland-based production company, named after Woolley and Jordan's 1984 fantasy film, is also developing No Man's Land, which Stephen Rea is to direct, and An Indian Summer, a love story set in 1920s Ireland. Jordan, who this year shot Double Down for Canada's Alliance Atlantis, is writing The Borgias, Breakfast On Pluto and Ned Kelly. Woolley was not available for comment.

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