Clooney's Deadly Role; Hopkins and Rock Use the Buddy System

January 10 -- George Clooney is headed for the chair. The peppery-haired actor is close to taking the lead in The Life of David Gale, a film about an anti-capital-punishment professor who gets sentenced to the electric chair when he's convicted of killing a liberal protester.

But wait, we don't want Clooney to die! Maybe the star has an obsession with mortality: He startled audiences with his near-death experience in the final moments of his current film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and most audiences have seen his soggy fate in The Perfect Storm.

Director Alan Parker, who painted a grim portrait with Angela's Ashes, should do nicely as the lenser of the less-than-sunny project. Nicolas Cage is also said to have a small part in the film.

Clooney will do Gale after he completes Steven Soderbergh's remake of Rat Packer heist film Ocean's Eleven, which also includes Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon.

Hopkins, Rock Count SheepMove over, Lethal Weapon: Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock will be the unlikely partners in the buddy flick actioner Black Sheep.

Rock will apparently play twin brothers, one of whom is an intellectual secret agent, The Hollywood Reporter notes. Hopkins — who next appears in the highly awaited Silence of the Lambs follow-up, Hannibal — will portray a weathered CIA man.

"We always try and have an interesting and unusual pairing of actors, and this is about as creative as you can get," producer Jerry Bruckheimer said of the odd couple. Rock got his big break in Bruckheimer's 1987 production, Beverly Hills Cop II. No director is yet attached.

Cusack's Smuggler's BluesGolden Globe nominee John Cusack will pull double duty (as star and producer) in Cosmic Banditos, an indie drug story gone right.

Banditos, which is based on a novel by A.C. Weisbecker, centers on a group of Colombian marijuana smugglers hiding in the jungle. Cusack portrays the American in their midst.

"It's just really original," Cusack told Variety, adding, "It deals with quantum mechanics in a gonzo, gung-ho sort of way." The High Fidelity star's character has a "quantum epiphany" when he realizes his life is merely the sum of particle laws.