Well, they're off to an excellent start with that top notch talent by signing De Palma to direct the picture, which will be produced by Harold, Block, Tory Tunnell (Awake, Trumbo) and Paul Hanson (Oliver Stone's W.).

PRODUCTION TO START BY YEAR'S END; QED STARTING OFFERS TO ACTORS
Deadline's original story stated that principal photography was "due to begin by early 2012," and today's post from Fleming states that production will begin "by year's end." TheWrap's Joshua L. Weinstein, following up on Fleming's Deadline report, states that "with the De Palma deal closed, QED is starting to make offers to actors."

Harold has cited early Roman Polanski as one of his main inspirations for making films. Last year, he was signed to Tunnell's Safehouse Pictures to apply his talents to commercials as well as feature films. Safehouse is mentioned by Fleming as one of the companies involved in The Key Man. Harold has had his hand in many a project of late. At Safehouse, he wrote a treatment for the Meryl Streep/Tina Fey comedy Mommy & Me, which he is co-executive producing with director Stanley Tucci. He has also written Fountain City, currently in development at Safehouse with Andrew Adamson directing. After hiring Harold a few years ago to work on a draft of Zach Snyder's "ultimate zombie movie," Army Of The Dead, Warner Bros. more recently set Harold to rewrite an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's time-travel space opera All You Need Is Kill, with Doug Liman attached to direct.

STEVEN BAUER TALKS 'SCARFACE'
And that's not all. In anticipation of the upcoming Blu-Ray release of Scarface, Asylum UK's Oliver Jones interviewed Steven Bauer, who said that he is very proud to have been a part of the film. "Yeah," Bauer told Jones, "I mean of course, a film like Scarface, it became like this huge thing, bigger than anyone at the time could ever have really guessed. Was it like a curse for my career? In a way. At first people hated the film. Well, the critics I mean at least. They said this film is horrible, no-one who was involved with this film should feel any sense of pride, or goodness -- there isn't a single redeeming thing about this film. But then we had the fans. There were people coming out of the screenings going crazy. When something is that big, you become that person to them, and I guess it can be hard to become anything else -- which, you know, is what an actor does. Do I wish it had never happened? Not at all. I'm really proud of my role in the film and I'm really proud of the film as a whole, it was such a privilege to be a part of it."

Bauer also talked about working with Al Pacino. "I guess you could say Scarface set the tone for the rest of my career," Bauer told Jones. "In the film, I think when Tony kills Manny, it's like, he's gone past redemption, that's his point of no return. People still come up to me in the street and are like, I can't believe he killed you man. I can't believe it. When I came onto the set Al really took he under his wing -- he showed me that acting can be really instinctive -- you learn the script, you trust it. And you see how it comes out. I think we all knew we were part of something special. Me and Al sat there saying what are people going to think of this -- we were imagining where we'd be a year later." Bauer also briefly talked about how he and Pacino met with Cuban immigrants "about what it was like in Cuba. And they were tough guys. That was the thing that really struck me, how tough these guys were, how bad they had it, how few opportunities they'd had. That was so far from my experience, it really stood out to me. I grew up in America and I felt like I could do anything, I had lot of opportunities. That certainly had an effect on my character."