Thandie Newton will play Will Smith's estranged wife in Pursuit of Happyness, a drama about an on-off salesman who wins custody of his son just as he is about to start a traineeship with a stock brokers' firm. Happyness will be directed by Italy's Gabriele Muccino, based on a script by Steve Conrad, who previously wrote the yet-unreleased drama The Weather Man. Filming is to start in the next few weeks and will be out next year.

Albert Finney is to join Russell Crowe on Ridley Scott's A Good Year. Based on the Peter Mayle novel, the film follows the adventures of an Englishman who leaves the rat race for the hills of Provence. Finney will play Crowe's uncle and a one-time owner of the property where the main character lives. Filming is to start next month in Paris.

Michelle Pfeiffer will play a successful career woman who has trouble with her love life in I Could Never Be Your Woman. In the romantic comedy, by Clueless director Amy Heckerling, Pfeiffer's character falls for younger man Paul Rudd (The Cider House Rules), while her daughter has love troubles of her own. The movie will be released next year.

Wallace and Gromit's latest adventures will be shown at the Toronto film festival next month. Their first feature-length outing, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, follows the pair as they attempt to stop a vampire rodent running riot in a vegetable contest.