Pitchfork

Okay, so. We've long heard rumblings about a potential rock opera movie musical, presented in three glorious dimensions, based on the life of Cleopatra, directed by Stephen Soderbergh and soundtracked by former Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard. But getting a firm grasp on all of it has proved a little tricky since the Pollard part of that equation hasn't exactly been forthcoming with the juicy details.

There's been an upswing in interest in the flick lately, including recent Variety and MTV.com articles that all but confirm everything we'd heard about the project. Apparently, the film is called Cleo, Soderbergh says that Catherine Zeta-Jones will play Cleopatra, Hugh Jackman's all but ready to go as Mark Anthony, and English actor Ray Winstone has been cast as Caesar. They expect to start shooting in April, in, it bears repeating, 3D.

The script for Cleo was written by author/former Guided by Voices bassist Jim Greer. Soderbergh told MTV.com, "He went away for like six weeks and wrote this great script! It's like an Elvis musical in a way. It's not serious. I mean it's historically pretty accurate but its sort of like Viva Las Vegas meets Tommy."

Oh, and Pollard? According to MTV, he's all in. Variety reports, "The music has been written by the indie rock band Guided by Voices," but unless it was written before Pollard stopped using the GBV name in 2004, that probably means just Pollard.

Pollard's people won't officially confirm anything specific about his involvement in the project, but note that a 2006 article in the New York Times describing the longstanding creative partnership between the Fading Captain and the acclaimed director gets Pollard's involvement in the then-incubatory Cleo project right. We tracked down the Times piece, which says, "the two have started working together on another project, Cleopatra, which is being written by Jim Greer...the film is described by Mr. Soderbergh as Tommy meets Viva Las Vegas." Hey, two years later, he's still using the same soundbite!

As a bit of background, Soderbergh wrote the introduction to Greer's Guided by Voices oral history/biography Guided by Voices: A Brief History, while Pollard wrote the music for Soderbergh's 2005 film Bubble.

While we wait for more information about this whole crazy project, we'll remind you that Bob's new sensation Boston Spaceships will released The Planets Are Blasted, their rather quick follow-up to this fall's fine Brown Submarine, February 17 from Guided by Voices, Inc.