Mabel Stark

Sarah Keene is the spokeswoman for Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes, and according to her, the famous two are likely to team up soon for their first movie together. The film will be a biopic of Mabel Stark, a lion and tiger (and liger?) tamer from the 1920s, and probably be derived from Robert Hough's fictional account of her life, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark.

Keene said "It's a great story, they've had their eye on it for a while. If they can get the script right, it would make a great film." The film was once scheduled to shoot in the summer of 2005, and Winslet got as far as carrying out a little circus research at the time.

Apparently, Stark was not quite five feet tall and only weighed a hundred pounds, which makes Winslet an odd, if pleasing, choice. She was also addicted to drugs, rather 'adventurous' in her sexuality and, according to many, utterly obsessed with tigers - and, hopefully, those last two facts are fully separate and distinct.

Mendes' involvement might make me suspicious of the film, but the book's certainly starting to sound interesting.