Jolie's 'Cleopatra' eyes Paul Greengrass

The Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass is reportedly the frontrunner to direct Angelina Jolie in Cleopatra.

According to Deadline, producer Scott Rudin and several of the filmmakers are in favour of Greengrass taking the director's chair for the 3D historical epic, which studio bosses at Sony Pictures are already comparing to Gone With The Wind.

Rudin revealed that the project will be a "revisionist" and "grown-up sophisticated version" that bears little resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor's 1963 biopic.

"She's not a sex kitten - she's a politician, strategist, warrior," he said. "In the Joseph Mankiewicz movie, Elizabeth Taylor is a seductress, but the histories of Cleopatra have been written by men. This is the first to be written by a woman."

Speaking about the source material for the film, Stacy Schiff's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Cleopatra: A Life, Rudin said: "It felt like such a blow-the-doors-off-the-hinges idea of how to tell it - impossible to resist. We're pretty close. A lot of directors want to do it, but there is only a handful we'll make it with."