HANNIBAL, THE MOVIE, is coming, according to Eurweb.com:

THE DEAL WITH DIESEL�S �HANNIBAL�: Budget problems plague actor�s labor of love.

The director, Vin Diesel, is very proud of himself for cutting the budget down to $50 million.

Diesel, in theaters on March 4 with the family comedy �The Pacifier,� has also made the recent decision to direct as well as star in Hannibal as the young man from the ruling clans of the city of Carthage in North Africa who makes an oath of vengeance against Rome when they kill his father. Making the revenge his life�s goal, Hannibal becomes a general by the time he's in his mid-20s, and with an army of 100,000 who have his back, he sets out to bring Rome down, first by conquering Spain, and then by launching a surprise (and famous) attack on Italy by way of the Alps, with an array of forces that included war-trained elephants.

When I read the rest, I started to think that the whole article must be a satire. But a little Googling confirmed that director Vin Diesel is planning to make a Hannibal movie. And Eurweb.com does not appear to be a satire site. Could Diesel be serious in what follows?

�To make things even more exciting, I�m going to make it a non-English, multi-lingual film that represents the many languages that Hannibal employed in his army,� enthuses Diesel. And the point being, Hannibal united people of no common culture, language, or religion and proved that united, they can defy tyranny. Very interesting point of where we are in our world.�

Diesel said Gibson had given him advice on the use of multiple languages, which helped to illustrate �The Passion of the Christ.�

�He�s always been a role model of mine in this industry,� said the action star. It�ll be Aramaic for Rome, Iberian for Spain, it�ll be some, you know, Maltese version. And it will represent all these different languages. So that�s what�s happening with �Hannibal.��

If he thinks the language of Rome was Aramaic, he could do with some better advice. Still, the prospect of a movie with dialogue in Punic is pretty interesting. Some Northwest Semitist out there could make a bundle as a consultant.