Tom Hanks is set to star as...

Tom Hanks is set to star as a low-life boxing promoter who stages neighborhood matches in Fox’s “Night and the City,” a remake of Jules Dassin’s 1950 film. No director is set, but Richard Price (“Sea of Love”) is at work writing the drama--with comic undertones--specifically for Hanks. It’s for down the road, after other commitments.

Elsewhere on the development trail: Warner Bros. has “Doc Hollywood” in the works as a starring vehicle for Michael J. Fox. The comedy, being written by Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman, concerns a plastic surgeon, heading for Beverly Hills and its lucrative clientele, who gets waylaid in a small Georgia town.

Disney/Touchstone hopes to star Bette Midler in “Widows,” currently being written by Richard Lagravenese. The Divine Miss M would play one of three women who decide to finish a heist--after their husbands are killed the first time around. Midler’s interested, sources say, but first she’s set for Touchstone’s “Scenes From a Mall,” opposite Woody Allen, then “For Our Boys,” which her company, All-Girl Prods., has developed for Fox.

Geena Davis is expected to star in “Hello, Stranger,” a comedy A&M; Films has set up at Morgan Creek. The actress awaits rewrites by authors Topper Lillien and Carroll Cartwright. . . . Meanwhile, producer Lawrence Gordon is currently developing “Mrs. California,” a comedy about 1950s homemaker contests, for Davis and Melanie Griffith. Sara Parriott and Josann McGibbon are the writers.

Diahann Carroll will co-star in director/writer/star Robert Townsend’s “The Five Heartbeats,” a film about the rise and fall of a black singing group in the 1960s. Carroll plays the wife of the group’s manager, running a modeling school who teaches the guys how to walk, dress and act with class. Dancer Harold Nicholas, of the legendary Nicholas Brothers, handles the choreography. Cameras roll March 19. Fox distributes.

Karen Black plays a woman who murders elderly boarders for their Social Security checks and buries her victims in the backyard in Grand Am Ltd’s “Evil Spirits,” which begins shooting in L.A. Thursday. Joan Caulfield (one of Paramount’s top stars of the ‘40s), Bert Remsen, Michael Berryman and Arte Johnson are also set in this black comedy inspired by a recent news story. Gary Graver, Orson Welles’ longtime cinematographer, directs from a script by Mikel Angel (who will also act in the film). Sidney Niekerk produces.

Raymond Burr is into the John Candy comedy “Delirious,” which rolls Wednesday in L.A. and New York for MGM/UA. Tom Mankiewicz directs this tale of a soap opera writer who awakens from an accident to discover his characters have come to life. Emma Samms, Jerry Orbach, Renee Taylor also star.