NEWS: From the Studio Backlots

Lions Gate Films said that it will produce the documentary The US vs John Lennon with LSL Productions. The film has already begun preproduction and will center on Lennon's life from 1966-76, when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.The film has received support and cooperation from Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. It will be co-written, directed and produced by LSL Prods.' David Leaf and John Scheinfeld."We could not have envisioned a more dynamic nor enthusiastic team than we found in David and John for this project," said Kevin Beggs, president of Lions Gate Television programming and production and head of Lions Gate's documentary feature development and production arm.

Mumbai-based Percept Picture Co. will co-produce Tree of Life, which will be produced by Donald Rosenfeld. Terrence Malick is in talks to direct and write the screenplay, and Colin Farrell is in talks to play one of the leads. Malik directed Farrell in The New World which will be released in theaters later this year. Other cast members are being finalized. Emmanual Lubezki is the proposed director of photography.The film's story outline has not yet been disclosed, but preproduction is slated to begin in January. Some parts of Life will be shot in India, for which Percept will handle ground production.

A week before the launch of the Toronto International Film Festival, Fox Searchlight Pictures has acquired the opening-night film, screenwriter-director Deepa Mehta's Water. Announced by Fox Searchlight president Peter Rice, the film marks the third project in Mehta's elemental trilogy, which includes Fire and Earth.

Water, set in 1938 Colonial India during Mahatma Gandhi's rise to power, has been embroiled in controversy since its inception. The film was shut down in India in 2000 because of its negative portrayal of India. The production faced violent protests and riots by fundamentalist Hindus, and Mehta's life was threatened. It took nearly five years for the Indian filmmaker to produce in Sri Lanka under an assumed name and a shroud of secrecy.

Jeff Robinov, President of Production, Warner Bros. Pictures announced earlier in the week that production has commenced on writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's newest project, Lady in the Water, starring Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard and an ensemble cast featuring Freddy Rodriguez from Six Feet Under fame, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, Sarita Choudhury, Mary Beth Hurt and newcomer Cindy Cheung.

In Lady in the Water, a story originally conceived by Shyamalan for his children, a modest building manager named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) rescues a mysterious young woman (Bryce Dallas Howard) from danger and discovers she is actually a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the treacherous journey from our world back to hers. Cleveland and his fellow tenants start to realize that they are also characters in this bedtime story. As Cleveland falls deeper and deeper in love with the woman, he works together with the tenants to protect his new fragile friend from the deadly creatures that reside in this fable and are determined to prevent her from returning home.

Produced by Shyamalan and Sam Mercer, Lady in the Water will film on location in Philadelphia. The director of photography is Christopher Doyle; the production designer is Martin Childs; the editor is Barbara Tulliver; the costume designer is Betsy Heimann and the composer is James Newton Howard.