Paul Greengrass could be directing Tom Hanks in a Somali Pirate flick!

Via Deadline:

Director Paul Greengrass and Sony Pictures have moved a step closer to the filmmaker coming aboard to steer the Sony Pictures' Somali pirate drama to star Tom Hanks as Captain Richard Phillips. Greengrass was among a short list of directors for the gig but I'm told Sony Pictures has just offered him the picture and talks are about to begin. Phillips was the skipper of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama who gave himself up as a hostage to Somali pirates to keep his crew from having to leave the ship with them. After three days of being held hostage alone with the armed pirates in a small lifeboat, Phillips was saved by Navy SEALs who staged a dramatic rescue that left the captain unharmed, three captors dead and another in custody. The film is based on Phillips' memoir A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea, which was published last year by Hyperion. Sony Pictures' The Social Network team of Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca, Dana Brunetti and Kevin Spacey are producing. Hanks signed on in March after sparking to a script written by Billy Ray. Elizabeth Cantillon is supervising for Sony Pictures.

Has Paul Greengrass run into trouble financing his film Memphis?

Apparently so, according to Deadline:

Universal Pictures has dropped plans to finance and distribute Memphis, the Paul Greengrass-directed film about the final days and assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The studio has halted progress on a film scripted by Greengrass and produced by Scott Rudin. Universal picked it up last month, with plans to put the picture in to production in June so that it could be ready for release around MLK Weekend, 2012. Why has this happened? The studio confirms that it halted the movie, but attributed it to timing and scheduling, and an uncertainty the film could be pulled together in time for next February.

I've heard another factor put pressure on the picture: the MLK estate was highly critical of the project, and exerted pressure on the studio to call it off. I've heard that Andrew Young, former confidante of the civil rights leader, reached out to Universal personally to register his objections. Now, I'd heard similar whispers when Lee Daniels was trying to make the MLK project, Selma, which seemed about to get underway last fall when The Weinstein Company stepped up as financier, but didn't get off the ground. The family, I've heard, made it known that it might go public with its displeasure over Greengrass's script, which could have hurt the film's theatrical prospects. Whether this is because the film goes in controversial directions, or because the estate has thrown its lot in with the Ronald Harwood-scripted MLK film at DreamWorks (which paid for the rights to use Dr. King's copyrighted speeches) is anyone's guess. All I know is that Rudin and Greengrass are now looking for another backer to keep the film on track.