Russell Crowe to Play Bill Hicks?

Crowe at the Improv: In what will surely make Bill Hicks’s zombie corpse rise up from hell in black-hearted rage, Russell Crowe has revealed that he has a “project based on the life of [the late] comedian Bill Hicks, which is going from treatment to draft stage with Kiwi writer Mark Staufer.� True, Hicks and Crowe both seem to have had an affinity for alcohol and picking fights with strangers, but Hicks might agree that a commercial biopic comes pretty close to “suckin’ Satan’s pecker.� [SMH via Comingsoon]

Cruise Feeling Sleepy: Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi have set up Sleeper at Warner Bros., with Cruise “loosely attached to star� in the DC Comics adaptation about a spy who’s impervious to pain because his body has fused with an alien artifact. Then the spy goes on to infiltrate a villainous organization and falls in love with a key member named Miss Misery. Um, Robert Downey Jr., any thoughts on this dazzling entry in the DC canon? HR]

The Coen Brothers Get Serious: Tony-nominated Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) will play a professor whose life unravels when his brother won’t move out of the house in Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man. Don’t worry about opening weekend; Spin City’s Richard Kind is playing the brother, lending some much-needed star power to the picture. [Variety]

Maneater Devours Cast: Dean Cain will star in Michael Emanuel’s Maneater, along with The Cable Guy’s Conrad Janis, Bratz’s Stephen Lunsford, House of 1000 Corpses’ Walter Phelan, 7th Heaven’s Maximillian Roeg, and Pushing Twilight’s Lacy Phillips. Horror movie follows a former FBI profiler investigating small-town murders that tie into a Native American legend… the legend of a mysterious stranger who throws litter out the window and makes grown men cry. [HR]

Office Overtime: NBC wunderkind Ben Silverman isn’t just relaxing while the Olympics crush the competition. “Beijing Ben� took a break from his Chinese vacation to lock Office writer Michael Schur into a mammoth overall deal, ensuring he’ll continue bringing buckets of laughter to your living room over the next few years. First up is the new Office spinoff pilot, which we’re slightly worried might now focus on Schur’s character: Dwight’s bearded cousin, Mose Schrute. [Variety]