Rebels with a Cause

Bob Hoskins, in town to co-star in “Heart Condition” for New Line Cinema, tells us his next gig will be on location in . . . the Western Sahara desert. The untitled project, from the creative team behind Hoskins’ British gangster drama, “The Long Good Friday” (1982), will focus on what the actor calls the severe oppression--”attempted genocide”--of tribespeople in the region, where rebels have been fighting Morocco’s King Hassan for independence of the Western Sahara.

Hoskins got involved earlier this year when the Earl of Winchell, seventh in line to the British throne, sent the “Roger Rabbit” star a letter and videotape about the Western Sahara situation (“I sat eating my corn flakes--in tears,” Hoskins recalled).

He joined a Jeep caravan across Europe to the Western Sahara to publicize the cause, staying in tents with 200,000 Bedoins, where the idea for the film was hatched. It’s scheduled to shoot in October.

Hoskins called it “a modern-day, terrorist version of ‘Candide,’ with me as Candide. The story of the Western Sahara has been kept quiet for 15 years. It must be told.”