Jude Law in 'King's Men' remake

LOS ANGELES, July 23 (UPI) -- Jude Law will star in the upcoming remake of the 1949 Best Picture Oscar winner "All the King's Men," the Hollywood Reporter said Friday.

Law will play Jack Burden, the journalist who is taken in by the populist Southern politician Willie Stark, a character said to be loosely based on one-time Louisiana Gov. Huey Long. John Ireland was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar in the original, which was based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel of the same name.

Sean Penn is reportedly in talks with Columbia Pictures to star as Stark -- the role that won Broderick Crawford the Oscar for Best Actor.

Steven Zaillian -- who won the screenwriting Oscar for "Schindler's List" in 1993 -- will direct the remake from his own adaptation of Warren's novel.

James Carville, a political consultant who once advised former president Bill Clinton -- and a Louisiana native -- is an executive producer on the project, along with producer-director Todd Phillips ("Starsky & Hutch," "Old School").