Deals: Jessica Simpson, Chris Tucker, David Bowie

–Jessica Simpson (left) may join Dane Cook in Employee of the Month. She’d play the lovely cashier at a discount store who inspires a rivalry between Cook and a rival sales clerk. Good choice for Simpson, especially since she might learn some valuable fall-back job skills on the set.

-Yes, we’ve heard this before, but this time, the money is finally in place for Chris Tucker, Jackie Chan, director Brett Ratner, and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson to shoot Rush Hour 3 next summer for a 2007 release. My favorite line in the Variety article concerns Tucker, who hasn’t acted since 2001’s Rush Hour 2. The article says he was offered many other comedies, but ”[h]e turned down all of them and has preferred to do standup comedy and live the life of a Renaissance man.”

–David Bowie will play real-life inventor and electrical mad-scientist Nikola Tesla in Christopher (Batman Begins) Nolan’s The Prestige, alongside Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.

addCredit(“Jessica Simpson: Albert Ferreira/Reuters”)