Director Bill Forsyth is negotiating with Burt...

Director Bill Forsyth is negotiating with Burt Reynolds to play the lead in “Breaking In,” the story of an older petty burglar who takes on a teen-age boy as his apprentice. The John Sayles script goes before the cameras next month in Portland for Act III Communications . . . . Real sports: Weintraub Entertainment already has one film about an unlikely social pastime--college debating--with “Mismatch,” so get ready for the company’s glasnost chess romance. Titled “Queen’s Gambit,” it will star Molly Ringwald as a board prodigy who enters an international tournament in Moscow. For fall filming . . . . Moto Cross racing is the backdrop of “American Built,” which films in Paris and Yugoslavia next month. Alex MacArthur, Peter Berg and Pamela Ludwig star for director Rocky Lang (producer Jennings’ son) in the action-romance.

Jacqueline Bissett and Mary Woronov play filthy rich but bored women in director Paul Bartel’s “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills,” which films locally in August for Cinecom. The women get involved with seamier types played by Ray Sharkey and Robert Beltran . . . . Paulina Porizkova is the object of Tom Selleck’s attention in the romantic thriller “Her Alibi” at Warners. Selleck will follow that film with another dramatic role in Touchstone’s “Hard Rain,” a yarn about a man unjustly imprisoned . . . . Actress Linda Shayne makes her directing debut with “The Purple People Eater” for Concorde and producer Brad Krevoy. The story, for those unfamiliar with Sheb Wooley’s novelty hit, concerns an alien arrived on earth to become a rock ‘n’ roll star. Befriending and abetting the title character are Ned Beatty, Shelly Winters, Little Richard (as the mayor), Chubby Checker, Sheb and Paul Reubens.

Director Pen Densham’s psycho-thriller “The Host,” (opening in August) with Joanna Pacula and Meredith Salenger, has been re-titled “The Kiss.” But even that title almost didn’t work because MGM owned it from a 1929 film with Greta Garbo. We’re told Ted Turner gave clearance because he wasn’t planning to colorize the earlier film . . . . Bill Paxton and Tod Field are brothers trying to clear their father of a bank job in “Back to Back.” Apollonia Kotera is along for the ride and the money and John Kincaide directs