By: Henry J. Fromage –

Remember those Left Behind books?  The post-Rapture Christian blockbuster series?  Well, you can’t be blamed if you hear about most books from the movies, as while they were filmed, it was through a low-budget “family” production company and starred Kirk Cameron.  Well, now a little more money is being put behind another version starring… Nicolas Cage.  Of course, by a little more money, I’m talking only 15 million bucks.

In other words, Cage is now available for birthday parties & bar mitvahs

Speaking of fundamentalist travesties… Catholic priest abuse scandal, anyone?  Long before your Jerry Sanduskys and Al Paternos, the U.S. Catholic Prelate was covering up cases of sexual abuse and moving priests from parish to parish instead of exposing them.  Now director Tom McCarthy (Win Win) and writer Josh Singer (The West Wing) will team up on an All the President’s Men-style film examining the efforts of six Boston Globe staffers who uncovered the scandal and told the world.

Yes, making a Deep Throat joke now officially makes you irredeemable.  Just look at this nun’s face when I told her what you just thought.

Hollywood loves its causes célèbres, and every once in awhile gets around to accomplishing something good in between all of the publicity photos and aggressive interviews.  For Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Tom Hardy, the cause close to their hearts is illegal poaching and animal smuggling.  At very least, they’ll be raising awareness with not one, but two films on the subject.  The first will star and is based on experiences of the friends of Hardy as a former special forces soldier who trains anti-poaching rangers in Zimbabwe and will be written by Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air).  The second will be a Traffic-esque multi-storyline top to bottom drama examining the topic.

No word on Van Pelt’s involvement as of this time.