Paul (“Crocodile Dundee”) Hogan is fast becoming...

Paul (“Crocodile Dundee”) Hogan is fast becoming Paramount’s Woody Allen. Like Woody’s films, Hogan’s latest comedy has no title yet--it’s simply listed as “Untitled Paul Hogan Project”--and it stars the lady of his life, Linda Kozlowski. Just added to the cast is Elias Koteas, a hot, young actor who in 1989 completed “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Desperate Hours.” The film rolls in January with Hogan’s partner, John Cornell, directing. Speaking of ninjas, “Saturday Night Live’s” Dana Carvey will star as the “Beverly Hills Ninja,” a comedy for Imagine Entertainment written by Mitch Klebanofs and Mark Feldberg. Donald Petrie (“Mystic Pizza”) directs for producers Brad Gray and Robert Lawrence. . . .

More and more novels will carry the dust-jacket blurb “Soon to be a major motion picture.” For instance, this spring, Frank Oz (“Little Shop of Horrors”) will direct “Body Politic,” a comedy for Orion about the vice-presidency. The film, produced by Davis Entertainment in association with David Kennerly (the former White House photographer), is based on a novel written by Lynn Cheney, wife of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and Vic Gold. John Warren and Bruce J. Friedman are the screenwriters. . . .

Sidney Sheldon’s new novel, “Memories of Midnight,” a follow-up to “The Other Side of Midnight,” won’t be published by William Morrow until spring, but the movie-rights bidding war has already begun. Sheldon insists he will only entertain big-screen offers. . . . Novelist Iris Rainer Dart has penned a sequel to her “Beaches,” the basis for the Bette Midler-Barbara Hershey film for Disney’s Touchstone Pictures. Disney already has optioned movie rights for the book, which will be published by Little Brown.

Novelist-film maker Frank De Felitta (‘Audrey Rose”) will start directing “Scissors,” Jan. 15, in L.A., a film based on a script for a psychological thriller he wrote many years ago with the late Joyce Selznick. Produced by Hal Polaire (executive producer of “The Music Box”), the film stars Sharon Stone (“Irreconcilable Differences”), Steven Railsback (“Armed and Dangerous”) and Vicki Frederick (“All the Marbles”). Stone plays a woman with a deep, dark past who takes a job in a loft apartment and can’t get out. Meanwhile, De Felitta’s new novel, “Funeral March of the Marionettes,” is due out this summer, which the author also wants to turn into a film. . . .

Sherman Hemsley (“Amen,” “The Jeffersons”) will star in the action-comedy “Vietnam After,” the first American film to shoot in Vietnam since the war. Miguel Rico will direct for producer Edward Coe.