U2 Back in the Studio, Recording an Album or Two

U2 Reteams With Eno, Lanois: U2 and longtime producing collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois have returned to the studio to begin recording the band’s next album. Lanois notes that the sessions thus far have been particularly fruitful, encouraging speculation that the recordings may yield two separate albums and that Apple will need to invent more tie-in products than previously planned. [Billboard]

Emmerich Goes Back to the Armageddon Well: Roland Emmerich’s new script 2012, written with Harald Kloser and featuring apocalyptic destruction sweeping the Earth, has drawn interest from multiple studios and looks likely to start a bidding war, which is odd, because it just makes us feel very, very tired. [Variety]

Four Hunt Wolverine: The cast of X-Men Origins: Wolverine fills out nicely with Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, and Friday Night Lights’s Taylor Kitsch taking key roles. Director Gavin Hood also adds Will.I.Am, ensuring that the press junkets will provide steady material for Vulture’s Quote Machine. [HR]

Need More Scrooge?: If a version of A Christmas Carol in which Jim Carrey plays all the roles doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, Kelsey Grammer will also play literature’s most famed miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, in a modern-day version titled An American Carol under the direction of Scary Movie 4’s David Zucker. Reached for comment at his gravesite, the corpse of Charles Dickens clawed through his rotted coffin and roamed the Earth, hungry for flesh. [Variety]

Newman Brings Lenny Back: Paul Newman will direct Of Mice and Men at the Westport County Playhouse this October. In related news, every actor in Hollywood is reading Steinbeck and learning how to project. [Backstage]

Sherawat Enters Age of Aquarian: Bollywood star Mallika Sherawat stars in director Drew Heriot’s An Aquarian Gospel, based on a legend that Jesus visited India in his early life. Though such an extra-textual take may raise eyebrows in some religious circles, Sherawat is already inured to controversy after her seventeen different kissing scenes in her Bollywood debut, Khwahish. [NYT]