Bronx-born director Abel Ferrara is preparing to begin shooting his $4m (£2m) Italian film noir in Naples. Based on Giuseppe Farrandino's novel Pericle il Nero, the project is said to mark a return to the dark tone of his 1992 cult hit Bad Lieutenant. Casting is under way. Ferrara has just wrapped shooting in Rome on the screwball comedy Go-Go Tales with Bob Hoskins, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento.

It looks like Halle Berry will finally get to play the lawyer who overturns a case of mass wrongful conviction in the long-in-the-works drama Tulia. The project, based on Nate Blakeslee's non-fiction book Tulia: Race, Cocaine and Corruption In a Small Texas Town, tells the tale of an infamous 1999 drugs bust that resulted in 46 black men being convicted, based on the testimony of one crooked cop. The project appeared to be off the backburner with the announcement that Carl Franklin, best known for directing Devil in a Blue Dress in 1995, is in negotiations to direct. Production is set to begin in Louisiana on May 1.

Ken Russell has written a BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) book. The veteran film director always had a pretty cavalier approach to mere facts in his films, and has now written what he calls "novel biographies" of the composers Edward Elgar and Frederick Delius . And best of all, Elgar: The Erotic Variations, and Delius: A Moment with Venus, come bound together as one chunky volume: "Two Novels in One Book!" as the publisher chirps.