Tom Cruise and Robert De Niro will...

Tom Cruise and Robert De Niro will play “Tom Mix and Pancho Villa,” respectively, in the Nelson Entertainment Production, to film in early 1988. The period adventure about the mythical friendship between the two men has been an on-again, off-again project for years. Oliver Stone was attached as both writer and director, but current negotiations are with Dennis Hopper to helm. . . . Before playing Villa, De Niro will team with Sean Penn in the remake of “We’re No Angels” for producer Art Linson. “Mona Lisa’s” Neil Jordan directs in November. . . .

Edward James Olmos will make his big-screen directing debut with New Century/Vista’s “Blood In, Blood Out” the story of the formation of the “Mexican mafia.” The screenplay by Floyd Mutrux will film this fall with Andy Garcia and Lou Diamond Phillips in the principal roles. . . . Laura Dern has been cast a nurse involved with a scientist in Paramount’s “Fat Man and Little Boy,” the saga of the building of the atomic bomb at the Los Alamos project. Filming of the Tony Garnett production starts next month in Mexico. Roland Joffe directs.

John Badham will now direct Universal’s “The Hard Way,” a yarn with Ted Danson as an actor who gets entangled in real-life police work while researching his role as a cop. To film later this year from a Dan Pyne script for producer William Sackheim. . . . Fred Gwynne plays the keeper of a small New England town’s darkest secrets in Paramount and Laurel Entertainment’s “Pet Semetary,” which films in Maine. Stephen King adapted his novel, Mary Lambert directs for producer Richard Rubinstein. . . . “K-9,” the story of cop Jim Belushi and his German shepherd partner, is before the cameras in San Diego. Steven Siegel-Scott Myers wrote the script for director Rod Daniel. Also in the cast: Ed O’Neill and “thirtysomething’s” Mel Harris.

Lobell-Bergman’s “Life After Life”--a Christmas release with Cybill Shepherd and Robert Downey, Jr. for Tri-Star--gets a new title. The story of a dead man who returns (in a different body) into his wife’s life 20 years later will be released as “Unforgetable.” . . . . Director Anthony Hickox shoots “Sundown,” a comic, revisionist vampire yarn co-writtten with John Burgess, for Vestron next month, with the blood suckers trying to develop a private blood bank and assimilate respectably into society. . . .