CYRUS THE GREAT is to be the subject of a British film that is now being planned, with Sean Connery and Angelina Jolie being sought as, respectively, the star and his empress. The goal of the movie is "to promote harmony across all the world's religions." All this according to the Daily Telegraph via N. S. Gill's Ancient/Classical History blog.

In other news of biblical gentiles in the Second Temple Period, according to Nature, Alexander the Great may have died of West Nile fever. At least part of the evidence for this seems to be a folkloristic-sounding passage in Plutarch which was written some centuries after the actual event, so I would treat the theory with due caution.