The Deal Report: May 19, 2006

MOVIES
+ Rachel McAdams, Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, and Patricia Clarkson are poised to say ”I do” to Marriage, a late-1940s drama about a cheating husband who decides killing his wife will spare her the pain of divorce. Director and co-writer Ira Sachs describes the project, which shoots in July, as a ”thriller about intimacy and the things we may not know about the people we sleep with.”

+ Those Alias spy skills may come in handy after all. Jennifer Garner is in talks to costar with Jamie Foxx in The Kingdom, a drama from director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) about an FBI team investigating bombings in the Middle East.

+ Danish import Susanne Bier will direct Halle Berry in Things We Lost in the Fire, about a woman who loses her husband and asks his unstable best friend (Benicio Del Toro) to move in.

+ Catherine Zeta-Jones will play a psychic who has an affair with a slippery dude named Houdini (Guy Pearce) in the ’20s biopic Death Defying Acts, from Little Women director Gillian Armstrong.