Actress Sondra Locke is back behind the...

Actress Sondra Locke is back behind the camera as director of Warner’s “Impulse,” an action drama about a woman vice squad cop. Lee Chapman’s original screenplay. Shooting is scheduled next month for producer Al Ruddy. . . . Lesley Ann Warren stars/exec produces Alive’s “Angel’s Dance Card,” to film in early 1989 in Venice, Italy. Joan Tewkesbury wrote/will direct the “erotic fairy tale” of a woman caught between her lover and mother. . . .

Robbie Robertson is back on the screen as a ‘60s rock icon who dropped out and returns to find the “scene” radically changed in “Insomnia,” to film in NYC in early 1989. David Fincher, a hot video director, makes his big-screen debut in the Steve De Jarnett-scripted musical. Martin Scorsese is executive producing with producers Jon Taplan and Nick Wechsler.

Holly Hunter will star opposite Richard Dreyfuss in MGM’s “Always.” Steven Spielberg directs the late Diane Thomas’ script, an update of the studio’s 1943 fantasy-romance, “A Guy Named Joe.” The original starred Spencer Tracy as a deceased pilot who becomes the guardian angel of another flyer who falls in love with Tracy’s former girlfriend. . . . Prior to “Always,” Dreyfuss stars in Tri-Star’s “Dinosaurs,” an early 1989 shoot for director Mark Rydell, adapted by Marshall Brickman from Avery Corman’s bestseller, “50”. . . .

Sean Young has been added to the “Batman” cast, playing Bruce Wayne’s (Michael Keaton) girlfriend Vicki Vale in the Warner’s production, filming in London later this month.

Roman Coppola--Francis’ son--makes his producing debut (with Anna Roth) on Commercial Pictures’ “Smash, Crash and Burn,” which begins this month in Los Angeles. David Rathod directs the Mark Mullin-Richard Shepard script--a rags-to-riches comedy about a heavy metal band. It stars the rock group Brunette, and local club owner Bill Gazzarri appears as . . . a club owner. . . .

Director Michael Apted heads for Leningrad in November to film an East-West rock concert, headlined by Boris Grabenchikov, the subject of his current documentary. The film will also highlight the making of the Soviet rocker’s album, produced by Eurythmic Dave Stewart. . . . John Sayles is adapting “An American Commander in Spain” about the Spanish Civil War’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade for Tri-Star and director Bille August, to film next summer. August, whose “Pele the Conqueror” won the top prize at Cannes in 1988, will follow with “House of the Spirits,” novelist Isabel Allende’s epic saga of three generations in a powerful Chilean family for producer Raffaella De Laurentiis. The latter’s being co-produced by the Swedish Film Institute.