CASTING AROUND

Willem Dafoe and Gregory Hines will play military cops on the trail of a prostitute killer in Fox’s “Saigon” (tentative title), a thriller set at the height of the Vietnam War, now in pre-production. . . . Keith Carradine, Genevieve Bujold and Isabella Rossellini into Alan Rudolph’s “The Moderns” (set in Paris in 1926), which begins filming in Montreal in April. . . . Burgess Meredith in title role of Jean-Luc Godard’s contemporized “King Lear” (replacing Rod Steiger, who replaced Norman Mailer), with Molly Ringwald as Cordelia, now shooting in Europe. . . . Tom Hanks stars in “Big,” the story of a young boy who inhabits a man’s body after playing a game at a carnival. Director Penny Marshall shoots the comedy in August in L.A. . . . Keiffer Sutherland (Donald’s kid) is Michael J. Fox’s drugged out woman-chasing buddy in “Bright Lights, Big City.” Joyce Chopra, who directed last year’s sleeper “Smooth Talk” directs this film of yuppie partner-searching in New York next month . . . “Das Boot” star Jurgen Prochow makes his TV debut as an elusive German with mysterious ties to series regular Saundra Santiago’s past in “Miami Vice,” now shooting in Miami. . . . George Carlin is a guide who leads two failing school kids into a special effects-laden future in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” now shooting in Tempe, Ariz. . . . Patrick Swayze portrays a young man who held his dad hostage as a teen-ager and then returns home 10 years later to make ammends in “Tiger Warsaw.” Piper Laurie and Philip Bosco are his parents. Shoots next month in Pennsylvania. . . . Hal Holbrook and Daniel J. Travanti are a father and son, respectively, who have a difficult time communicating in the play “I Never Sang for My Father,” which they’ll perform in August in Stockbridge, Mass., prior to (fingers crossed) Broadway.