Roberts, Cusack, Zeta-Jones May Be Sweethearts

September 18, 2000 -- Julia Roberts and John Cusack are not lovers. But they might play lovers in a movie, and if you think that's steamy, get a load of this: Catherine Zeta-Jones may join them!

Basically, we're talking about the fire salsa of spicy romantic triangles.

Variety reports that the trio of stars is orbiting a project being developed by former 20th Century Fox and Disney studio chief Joe Roth, who recently launched his own production and distribution company, Revolution Studios. The film, America's Sweethearts, is based on a script by Billy Crystal and Peter Tolan (who collaborated with Harold Ramis and Ken Lonergan on the screenplay for Crystal's Analyze This).

Cusack and Zeta-Jones would play the titular duo, married movie stars whose marriage — in the Bruce-and-Demi, Meg-and-Dennis mode — has come apart at the seams. And yet, wouldn't you know it, they just wrapped a big film together and, well, someone's gotta get the word out about that sucker. Crystal may also star in the film as a publicist who attempts to keep the marriage alive for promotional purposes, even as Cusack's character is falling for his wife's newly slimmed-down sister, played by Roberts.

Cusack and Zeta-Jones played former lovers earlier this year in the sardonic 30-something romantic comedy High Fidelity. Cusack and Roberts have crossed career paths just once, in Robert Altman's The Player.

Roth, whose fledgling studio has a number of projects on its 2001 docket — including Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down and The Chambermaid, John Hughes' first directorial endeavor since 1991's Curly Sue — may direct Sweethearts himself. If the stars involved all sign deals, production could commence in January.