British playwright Peter Morgan, who recently won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, for his script for "The Queen", is reviving a more socially conscious strain of film and theatre, but one which is not overtly political in its focus. His barbs are just as often directed at the media which covers the politicians and public figures that are traditionally the targets of scrutiny.

In the wake of his screen success, his first stage play, "Frost/Nixon", based on one of the most famous interviews of all time, the 1977 battle of wits and wills between former president Richard Nixon and British journalist and media personality David Frost, was imported to Broadway, and is now set to be adapted for the screen, with Warren Beatty rumoured to play the disgraced president.

It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that two people just talking together would make for so so theatre, and a rather boring movie. But it is after all the basis for all drama, and when done well, can be riveting. A second point is that the play doesn't focus exclusively on the interview itself, but also on the intrigue surrounding it.

David Frost, who was desperate to prove himself, had put up his own money, and some he didn't have, to set up the first ever post-Watergate interview with Nixon. Both men, from lower middle class backgrounds, almost equally obsessed with their social position, saw the interview as a chance to rehabilitate their reputations. The victory of one would mean the defeat of the other.

And through three gruelling sessions of verbal sparring with the former president, it looked like Frost would come up with hours and hours of the ex-president talking, but saying nothing at all. But in the fourth he managed to find the chinks in Nixon's armour and cornered him into a confession of guilt and an apology to the entire nation.

Director Ron Howard, Hollywood's go to guy for blockbuster dramas, has confirmed that he will be making the film version, with shooting beginning in August, and a slated release in the autumn of '08. That means that production of the sequel to "The Da Vinci Code", "Angels & Demons" would be pushed back to February of 2008 for a theatrical release sometime in December of that year.

The part of Frost in both the London and New York stage versions was played by Michael Sheen, who also played Prime Minister Tony Blair in "The Queen", while Frank Langella played Nixon.

Rumours are that while Sheen will be repeating his role in the film, Howard has gone for a bigger name to play Nixon. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere reports that sources well placed to know claim that Warren Beatty has been offered the role.

If the Beatty-Nixon-Howard things turns out to be true, this has to be one of the most bizarre casting calls I've ever heard of. Surreal almost. Beatty is not a chameleon-type actor. His Bugsy showed that he's pretty good as a swaggering sociopath, but I really don't see him getting under the skin of a conflicted and constipated hollow man who once described himself in a letter to his mother as "good dog Richard."
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I guess the thinking is that if Hopkins can play Nixon without looking the least bit like him, Beatty can do it for Ron Howard. I suspect that the reaction around town is going to be fairly negative and that Howard may have second thoughts.

So, a bit of a hedge there at the end. Which big name actor could credibly pull off the role of the president brought down by his own haunted character?