The espionage thriller Edwin A. Salt is getting more than a name change – it’s about to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Yes, it only took a dash of that old Hollywood magic to transform Tom Cruise into Angelina Jolie. (Do Katie Holmes and Brad Pitt know about this? And will there be camera crews on hand when they find out?) Cruise was originally attached to the project, which Philip Noyce will direct for Columbia Pictures, but according to Variety, Edwin “will be redrafted by screenwriter Kurt Wimmer as a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie.” She’ll play the title character (Edwina Salt?) – “a CIA officer who's accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy and must elude capture long enough to establish her innocence.” Rumor has it Cruise lost interest when they wouldn’t let him wear his fat suit.

Cloverfield honcho J.J. Abrams is the new Irwin Allen. Abrams is teaming with original Omen screenwriter David Seltzer for a “disaster flick for Universal involving an earthquake,” says the Hollywood Reporter, which is quick to note that the project will not actually be a remake of the 1974 Earthquake. No word yet on whether the Abrams version will be released in Sensurround.

The young adult novel series Maximum Ride is coming to the big screen. As Variety explains it, “protags are six children who have been genetically altered to be 98% human and 2% bird. The kids, who are bred to fly, escape a lab-rat existence and are then pursued by their scientist creators, who send a pack of part-human part-wolves called Erasers to hunt them down.” Those kids live in my neighborhood and I gotta tell ya, they made a real mess of my windshield.

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