Top UK directors Stephen Daldry and Michael Winterbottom have boarded pictures for Scott Rudin, the New York-based producer who is one of Paramount Pictures' chief suppliers as well as a force in US theatre.

Daldry, who directed this season's highly touted awards contender The Hours for Rudin, has taken over from Sydney Pollack at the helm of Rudin's long-cherished film of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay, while Winterbottom has now attached himself to direct Rudin's production of Freedomland, a film of Richard Price's 1998 novel in which Julianne Moore, herself a star of The Hours, is attached to star.

Rudin, renowned for his ability to get films made from novels, is also teamed with Daldry on a version of the bestseller The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen which is being scripted by UK playwright David Hare. Hare wrote the script for The Hoursfrom Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Kavalier & Klay has been scripted by Chabon himself and will be financed by Paramount; Sydney Pollack for whom Rudin produced The Firm and Sabrina had been working on directing it, but recently dropped out. It tells the story of an escape artist who flees Nazi Europe and teams up with his cousin in Brooklyn to write comic books. Rudin says that he is looking to cast Jude Law in the larger role of Kavalier.

Shooting on Kavalier & Klay is scheduled to begin in early summer next year after Rudin has completed a film of the Lemony Snicket children's books A Series Of Unfortunate Events directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Jim Carrey.

Winterbottom is currently in pre-production on futuristic thriller Code 46 with Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton starring for United Artists. Freedomland has been scripted by Price himself and tells the story of a carjacking of a single mother and the abduction of her son in a New Jersey city and the ensuing explosion of racial politics.

Among Rudin's many credits are blockbusters like The Firm, Sister Act, Sleepy Hollow, The Truman Show, The Addams Family, The First Wives Club, Rules Of Engagement, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Shaft, Zoolander, Ransom, In And Out and Clueless as well as adaptations of novels and plays such as Angela's Ashes, Marvin's Room, Wonder Boys and Iris not to mention original projects such as The Royal Tenenbaums and Changing Lanes.

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