Well, I told you a year ago that a Michael Jackson movie was in the works. It’s separate from the Broadway musical “MJ.”

John Logan wrote the screenplay. Graham King is producing.

Now we know that it has a director in Antoine Fuqua. He’s never directed a musical or a movie with music. It’s not even clear if he’s a distant relative of late R&B great Harvey Fuqua. Antoine makes a lot of gritty movies. So this should be unusual, to say the least.

Here’s the link to last February‘s story.

Doing this kind of movie, a soup to nuts bio, is problematic. Look at current Whitney Houston movie. It’s better to do what the musical did, pick a moment in time. With Michael, everything after the “Thriller” period would be a huge downer on screen. Do we really want to see a movie that includes lawsuits, arrests, trials? And how much of it could possibly be accurate? (Almost nothing.)

We’ll see how this works out.

The great film producer Ed Pressman has died in Los Angeles. He was 79, and beloved in the industry.

I’m lucky to say Ed, his wife Anne and son Sam have been friends of mine for a long time. The Pressmans are uniquely lovely people in a terrible business. How Ed managed to maintain integrity and still be hugely successful is a mystery. He was always up against a tough world but made it work.

Ed burst onto the movie scene in 1973 when he produced Terence Malick’s debut film, “Badlands.” His dozens of credits that followed included Oliver Stone’s two “Wall Street” movies, “The Crow” series, and a terrific Al Pacino film called “City Hall.” Some of his other major successes were Barry Levinson and Pacino’s Emmy nominated “Paterno” for HBO, “American Psycho,” the excellent “Blue Steel” with Ron Silver and Jamie Lee Curtis, “Reversal of Fortune” with Jeremy Irons, Abel Ferrara’s best movie, “Bad Lieutenant,” with Harvey Keitel, Charles Burnett’s acclaimed “To Sleep with Anger,” John Byrum’s “Heartbeat” about the Beat Generation poets, and the “Conan the Barbarian” series, and a cult film I loved called “Cherry 2000” with Melanie Griffith. And that’s just a sampling.

What Ed did which was so brilliant: he made movies in New York, he made moneymakers and art films, mixing it up and taking chances on small films that would last and be eminently watchable over the years. He was awarded the prestigious John Cassavetes Award from the Spirit Awards in 1991 for exactly that reason.

A light dims in Hollywood and New York. Condolences to Ed’s remarkable family. Look for tributes today on Twitter. He will be sorely missed and always remembered. Producer Cassian Elwes posted: “Ed and his wife Annie befriended me when I was just starting out and invited me to parties and events when I knew no one. That type of acknowledgment and acceptance meant everything to a 23 year old wannabe and I will never forget it. Lastly about pressman. He’s the guy I looked up to in the business because he never took no for an answer. He made sh.. happen which I aspire to every day.”

I’ve no doubt Paramount Pictures and the producers of “80 for Brady” are disappointed over Monday’s NFL results.

Tom Brady’s football season ended with a decisive loss to the Dallas Cowboys for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady now faces either retirement — which is unlikely– or a move to a better team like the Miami Dophins.

For Paramount, Brady in the Super Bowl would have been marketing magic. That’s because the studio has a movie set for release on February 3rd called “80 for Brady.” It’s the true story of four older female New England Patriots super fans who follow Brady to the Super Bowl. In the film, the women are played by Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin.

A lot has gone into this film. Diane Warren wrote a title song that’s sung by superstars Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry, Belinda Carlisle, and Gloria Estefan.

When all this was greenlit, I’m sure everyone involved thought: What could go wrong? Well, just Tom Brady — who makes a cameo in the film — having a bad season. And he did. The Buccaneers finished with eight wins and nine losses for the season. Brady is ready to leave the Buccaneers and end his career with a winning team. While he’s waiting, he may at least get a hit movie. Advance word on “80 for Brady” is that it’s a lot of fun, and a good potential winter hit — regardless of how the Buccaneers did. Fonda, et al may wind up the winning team of the season.

PS Youngster Sally Field– only just 76 — will be honored next month by the Screen Actor’s Guild for Lifetime Achievement. It’s about time. She’s only won 2 Oscars and rafts of other prizes.