Intermedia has bought film rights to Baghdad Blog, the bookof a weblog written by a 29 year-old Iraqi calling himself Salam Pax aboutdaily life in Baghdad before and after the invasion.

Salam Pax has written his own column in The Guardian newspaper inthe UK and has become popular there with his comic and irreverent take on popculture against a backdrop of dictatorship and war.

"He's like a Nick Hornby in the middle of a war," saidScott Kroopf, chairman of the motion picture group at Intermedia.

The project was brought into Intermedia by Gavin James, managing director of Intermedia UK, and Sarah Harvey, UK development executive, who are currently looking for a writer toadapt Baghdad Blog into a screenplay.

Among the other projects on the UK arm's development slate is HotWater, a film of the PG Wodehouse novel to which Oliver Parker is attachedto direct, and Liberty, an original screenplay about gun-smuggling byJez Butterworth and John Henry Butterworth which Jez Butterworth will directand Mirage Enterprises is producing with Intermedia.