Robin Williams has now firmed up plans to star in two upcoming projects.  First up, Williams will play President Dwight D. Eisenhower in director Lee Daniels’ drama The Butler.  The film tells the true story of Eugene Allen, a butler who served at the White House from 1952 to 1986.  Forest Whitaker plays Allen, Oprah Winfrey is set as his wife, and David Oyelowo will star as Allen’s son.  Daniels is casting a number of stars to play the famous men and women who come in and out of the White House over the years, and it was announced today that Williams will be playing Eisenhower.  John Cusack, Alan Rickman, Terrence Howard, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda, Colman Domingo, Minka Kelly, and more are also lined up to appear.

Additionally, we previously heard that Williams would star alongside Mila Kunis and Peter Dinklage in Phil Alden Robinson’s high concept comedy The Angriest Man in Brooklyn.  The actor’s involvement has now been confirmed, and you can read the full press release after the jump.

You have 90 minutes left to live, what do you do?  That’s the premise of The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, a new screenplay from Daniel Tapitz (Red Dog) to be directed by Phil Alden Robinson (The Sum of All Fears).  The picture centers on the fallout after a stand-in doctor mistakenly tells an obnoxious patient that he has an hour-and-a-half left to live.  While the patient goes on a tirade in New York City, attempting to right all the wrongs in his life, the doctor tries in vain to track him down.  The high concept comedy stars Robin Williams, Mila Kunis and Peter Dinklage, and has also snared Melissa Leo and James Earl Jones.  The Angriest Man in Brooklyn is set to start filming this September in Brooklyn.  Hit the jump for more.

Not all J.J. Abrams productions can amass the hype of the extraterrestrial Steven Spielberg-produced Super 8 or the spy drama and hopeful savior of NBC Undercovers, but that doesn’t mean they’re not just as intriguing.  The Star Trek director has had an adaptation of Wired magazine article “The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Diamond Heist” on his production slate for over a year now, but there’s some movement on the project with the hire of Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams) to write the screenplay.

In last year’s reports on the project, it was rumored that Abrams may direct, though there’s no update on said possibility.  After nearly a 20-year hiatus from feature film screenplays, Robinson’s writing career is certainly picking up again: the Oscar-nominee is also working on a Frank Sinatra biopic for Martin Scorsese.  Hit the jump for the skinny on the hyperbolized diamond heist in question.

There’s baseball movies…and then there’s the baseball movie.

‘Field of Dreams’ – arguably even more so than the terrific ‘Bull Durham’ – is one of a miniscule few sports flicks that possess significant appeal to the mainstream movie masses. Its dedication to explore the deep-seeded emotion that sport enlivens…versus the reverse approach so common to this genre…continues to keep this movie fresh 20 years since its inception.

W.P. Kinsella’s novel about ousted baseball player ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson is wonderfully executed by Screenwriter and Director Phil Alden Robinson, a visual, soundtrack (James Horner) and script gem perfectly executed by its team of A-grade actors.

Variety is reporting that Martin Scorsese is directing a biopic based on the life of Frank Sinatra called, appropriately, “Sinatra”.  This news always goes down smooth because it’s the kind of film we expect from Scorsese.  It will be his fifth biopic (sixth if you count “The Last Temptation of Christ”), it’s an Italian-American director exploring the life of an Italian-American singer and actor, and Sinatra was a legend in his own time, much like the subject of Scorsese’s most recent biopic, Howard Hughes in “The Aviator”.  One day, I would really like Scorsese to just blow all of our minds and say “I’m directing the next ‘Transformers’ movie.”

The script is being developed by Phil Alden Robinson (“Sneakers”, “Field of Dreams”) and since it would kill Variety to actually call someone and make an inquiry, we’re left to wonder where this project lands in relation to everything else Scorsese potentially has on tap: the film about Boston hitman John Mortorano, “Silence”, and “I Heard You Paint Houses”.  Using my rudimentary knowledge, I would assume that “Silence” is going to be Scorsese’s next film simply because it has already has begun attaching names like Daniel Day Lewis, Benecio Del Toro, and Gael Garcia Bernal.  But that’s just pure conjecture on my part.  Sweet, pure conjecture.