Matthew McConaughey’s got double trouble: He’s negotiating a two-picture deal with New Line. He would play a guy haunted by specters of old girlfriends in the aptly titled Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and a New Orleans bar fighter hunted by an enemy just released from prison in The Grackle.

Natalie Portman gets a, er, head start in The Other Boleyn Girl. The Oscar-nominated thesp, along with Eric Bana, is in talks to star in the historical drama as the ill-fated Queen Anne, who battles with sister Mary for the heart of King Henry VIII (Bana). Justin Chadwick directs the Columbia Pictures epic, shooting in Europe in late September.

Owen Wilson knows the drill when it comes to unwanted guests–he was one himself. The tables turn for the Wedding Crashers star: He plays a soldier hired to fend off a high school bully in the comedy Drillbit Taylor. The Paramount Pictures film begins shooting in September in Los Angeles with plans for a summer 2007 release.

War is heaven for Philip Seymour Hoffman. The Oscar-winning Capote star joins fellow statuette owners Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in Charlie Wilson’s War, adapted by Aaron Sorkin from George Crile’s book about a rogue congressman and a CIA agent who arm Afghan rebels to fight invading Soviets in the 1980s. Cameras roll Oct. 10.

Apparently Tim Burton thinks Johnny Depp is still good with scissors. Burton wants to direct his Edwards Scissorhands‘ star in a film adaptation of Sweeney Todd, the Stephen Sondheim musical about a murderous barber. Paramount’s DreamWorks studio produces the movie, which was given the green light after production on Burton’s other film, Believe It or Not starring Jim Carrey, was deep-sixed.