Odds and ends for Thursday:

• Even though IMDB lists Zach Braff as its director, Barry Sonnenfeld is in final negotiations to helm Andrew Henry's Meadow for 20th Century Fox. Pic, which is based on the popular children's book, follows a boy inventor who escapes suburbia and travels to a meadow. There, he sets up some sort of community where he eventually teams up with other outcasts on a mission to save their parents. Braff, along with his brother Adam, originally set up the pic and developed the story while Adam wrote the script. Perhaps, since Zach is now off directing a Danish re-make, he has relinquished his director's hat.

• Who knew Catherine Zeta-Jones was so into magic. Apparently, the actress is in talks to star opposite Guy Pearce in biopic about the one and only Harry Houdini. Set in the mid-twenties, Death Defying Acts will pick up Houdini's story while he's at the height of his career, touring the country and amazing the public with his brilliant escape acts. That's right folks, David Blane has nothing on this guy. Zeta-Jones will play an exotic psychic (I wonder if that means she tells your fortune while in her underwear?) who seduces Houdini into a passionate affair.

• Well, it looks like HDNet Films is really starting to make some moves. Not long after Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's company decided to up its budget cap from under $2 million to under $5 million (assuming the right talent was attached), comes word that Zoe Cassavetes' Broken English has wrapped up its stars and will become the latest HDNet venture to head into production. Onboard what appears to be a quirky romantic comedy about a woman lost in her 30's and looking for love, will be Parker Posey, Drea de Matteo, Gena Rowlands, Jeanne Moreau, Justin Theroux and Josh Hamilton.