Lily Tomlin will play Ruthy Redick in...

Lily Tomlin will play Ruthy Redick in the “The Ruthy Redick Story” for Davis Entertainment, to film later this year. The comedy, set in 1969, has Ruthy’s mother sending her to retrieve a younger sister from liberated NYC--and Ruthy becoming hipper in the process. . . . Roy Scheider heads the cast of Trans World’s “Night Game,” a murder mystery; filming starts in Houston Aug. 8, with the Astrodome playing a pivotal role. Peter Masterson directs the Spencer Eastman-Tony Palmer script for producer George Litto. . . . Time cover boy Edward James Olmos joins the cast of Rastar’s “Revenge” as a Mexican drug czar battling Kevin Costner for the affections of a young woman, played by Madeleine Stowe.

Newcomer Angela Bassett plays the title role in “Dessa Rose,” the period drama of a slave abetted in a worker’s uprising by a sympathetic female plantation owner (Natasha Richardson). Irwin Winkler first-time directs the United Artists release, which films Aug. 1 in Mississippi with Cicely Tyson co-starring. . . . “Fat Man and Little Boy,” the story of the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M., has moved from Warners to Paramount, to film in October. Director Roland Joffe, who co-wrote with Bruce Robinson, has offered the roles of J. Robert Oppenheimer to Harrison Ford and Col. Leslie Groves to Paul Newman. . . . Meanwhile, Warners has acquired Scott Turow’s best seller “Presumed Innocent” from UA. Alan Pakula will direct for Sydney Pollack’s Mirage Productions.

Title of the Week: “Robbie Zenith and the Pig of Knowledge,” a comedy by Neal Israel, Pat Proft and Jeffrey Barron, about a young salesman who wants to do something heroic, getting help from a mysterious psychic. Tobe Hooper directs next month for producers Israel and Jonathan Krane. Comic Rich Hall has been signed for the pivotal role of Father Bob.