Warren Beatty’s new project will be about Howard Hughes, big names being eyed for the film’s roles

A couple of days ago, the news was that Warren Beatty cut a deal to star and direct in an “untitled comedy” for Paramount that he himself had written. Today, Deadline is reporting that Beatty’s project is in fact a film about the later years of aviation mogul Howard Hughes’s life (i.e. probably when he was like this).

Beatty will play Hughes (a part he’s been after for quite a long time), though the picture isn’t exactly being classified as a biopic. All that’s currently known is that part of the plot involves “an affair he had with a young woman” when he was an older man. As for who else might be joining Beatty, here’s who the writer/director/actor is reportedly meeting with: Andrew Garfield, Alec Baldwin, Annette Bening, Shia LaBeouf, Jack Nicholson, Evan Rachel Wood, and Rooney Mara.

While this is all very well and good, my question is: What’s going to happen to Christopher Nolan’s long-planned Hughes film, his supposed next project after THE DARK KNIGHT RISES? His version (which was originally going to star Jim Carrey) has already been sidelined once before thanks to Martin Scorsese’s THE AVIATOR. I like Beatty and I’d like to see him come back with something worthwhile, but I really don’t want to see Nolan’s project sidelined yet again.