Hilary Swank and Richard Gere are getting ready to star in a new biopic about Amelia Earhart. Set in the 1930’s, Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and mysteriously disappeared in a flight to the Howland Island.

This movie however, will focus on her early years. It is the first Amelia Earhart movie to really get off the ground — see what I did there? Julianne Moore was previously attached to a project about the aviator with Mel Gibson, but the movie didn’t make it into production. Earlier, in 1994, Diane Keaton portrayed Earhart in a TV series about the famous pioneer.

‘Amelia’ will be hitting the theaters in the Fall of 2009.

In cooperation with some partners in China, Hollywood studios are placing one whole billboard for two weeks to stop piracy. The board shows Jackie Chan with the text: “Protect the movies, say NO to piracy.” The billboard will be placed in one of the busiest districts of Chaoyang, so 20 million people will see the message.

20 million will see the message, in a country with over 1.3 billion people. Of the 20 million, will anybody care with a text like “say NO to piracy?” Did they even check if ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘yes’ in Chinese?

Hey, at least we tried.. Here’s our first podcast. We might do some more in the future. We talk about last week’s news and some other nonsense. You can download it at the link below.

Film-industry.biz podcast #1: At least we tried