WORK IN PROGRESS

Tri-Star’s “Red Heat”--Arnold Schwarzenegger as a tough Soviet cop tracking a ruthless Russian drug smuggler--just blew in from Windy City filming for L.A. interiors, and it’s sure keeping screenwriters busy. Directed by Walter Hill, the screenplay is currently credited to Hill, Harry Kleiner and Troy Kennedy Martin. But we’ve learned that at least four other writers (two teams) have toiled on the project--Steven Meerson & Peter Krikes (“Star Trek IV”) and John Mankiewicz & Daniel Pyne--and that Hill still has writers coming on the set to fiddle with the script.

“You’ve got to understand that Walter likes to create as he goes along,” we were told by a source close to the production. “Also, the project was put together quickly based on an idea of his--a Russian cop in Chicago. There was no script.”

A spokesman for the Writers Guild said Hill was a member in very good standing: “He does tend to hire a lot of people but he pays well above minimums and we feel he’s been quite straightforward about screen credit.”

By the way, there’s another “Red Heat” due out on video in November. Produced in 1984 by Arnold Kopelson, it stars Linda Blair and Sylvia Kristel as women behind bars in an exotic locale.

Hill’s “Heat” was originally called “Dmitri,” but the shooting script features no one by that name. A rep for producing Carolco said the company was aware of the other “Heat” but “you can’t copyright a title.”

Carolco has registered the title with the MPAA; Kopelson didn’t.