Michelle Pfeiffer will trill as a singer...

Michelle Pfeiffer will trill as a singer who joins “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” a Gladden/Mirage production for Fox filming locally in December. Jeff and Beau Bridges play the title piano-playing lounge musicians, with writer Steve Kloves also making his directorial debut. . . . . Rutger Hauer will be “Up to Date” for Italian film maker Lina Wertmuller. The English-language romantic-thriller starts production in Rome in January with subsequent filming in Europe and NYC. . . . Kris Kristofferson plays an industrialist who sets up an anti-terrorist squad after his wife and children die in a hostage abduction in “Ryder,” filming locally next month. Christopher Plummer plays his adversary and Lesley-Anne Down a savvy ally. Brian Hutton directs the script by Dennis Lanning and Jeffrey Jolson-Colburn for producer Billie Jolson.

Helen Mirren and Anouk Aimee join Donald Sutherland in Hemdale’s “Bethune,” which resumes filming in Montreal next week after a year’s shutdown. Mirren plays the wife of the activist-surgeon who fought alongside Mao Tse-tung. Phil Borsos directs the Ted Allan script. . . . . Director Renny Harlin segues from “Nightmare on Elm Street IV” to Fox’s “Alien III,” an early summer ’89 shoot. Science-fiction novelist William Gibson wrote the new episode which, at this writing, won’t star Sigourney Weaver. . . . . “Milena,” the true story of a Polish journalist and confidante of Kafka, is set to film in Prague, Vienna and Munich in February 1989. Valerie Kaprisky stars in the title role with Philip Anglim--Broadway’s “Elephant Man”--as Kafka and Nick Mancuso as her third husband, a Communist agitator. Vera Belmont (“Rouge Baiser”) wrote the screenplay and directs. . . . . Timothy Leary and Meat Loaf join Burt Young and Lainie Kazan in the gangster comedy “Medium Rare,” filming locally in late November. Leary is cast as a dopey pathologist and Mr. Loaf plays crime czar Young’s henchman in the film by writer-director Paul Madden.

Steve Railsback plays “Assassin” in the L.A. Film Group production filming in Mexico later this month--pursued by the CIA after botching a hit on a U.S. senator. Nicholas Guest is the hunter, Sam Melville the politician and Pamela Semone a femme fatale in the Steve Katz script. Jon Hess directs for producers Abe Glazer and Eugene Kelly. . . . . Director Charlie Matthau’s next is “Firewater Pond,” a comedy about an enterprising schemer who brings prosperity and trouble to a Maine town with his land development plan. The character also has a twin brother. Matthau also adapts Michael Kimbell’s novel . . . . Kenneth Mars plays the mayor and Gerrit Graham a petty criminal in Warner’s “Police Academy 6” for director Peter Bonerz, currently filming in L.A.