The lambs have now been truly silenced. After months of speculation Jodie Foster has announced that she will not be reprising her role of FBI agent, Clarice Starling in Hannibal, the sequel to the 1991 Oscar-winner, The Silence of the Lambs.

Instead, Foster will direct her protégé Claire Danes in Flora Plum, an Elephant Man-type story about a girl who is adopted by a circus freak.

Foster's withdrawal from the movie does not bode well for the project that has been beset by problems.

Once Thomas Harris's sequel, Hannibal, was published, Director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Ted Tally - who won Oscars for Silence of the Lambs - both passed on the opportunity to be involved in the movie, because they found the book's content too disturbing.

David Mamet was removed from the project because Foster reportedly disliked his screenplay, which, like the novel, sees Starling indulging in cannibalism after being brainwashed by Lecter.

It was hoped she would change her mind when director Ridley Scott came aboard and hired Schindler's List scribe Steve Zaillan to rewrite the screenplay with a changed ending.

The new version convinced Anthony Hopkins to make a second outing as the flesh-eating psychiatrist, and it was hoped that Foster, who has often said she would love to work with Hopkins again, would sign up as well.

Filming is due to start in spring, and the search is on to find another Starling. Gillian Anderson - no stranger to playing FBI agents in the X-Files - has long been rumoured as a possible replacement, but Variety now believes the project to be "stillborn".

 Today's passnotes on Jodie Foster.

Affleck goes public about Batman rumours

Following earlier reports that Ben Affleck is to star as the new Batman, with one proviso - that ex-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow is Catwoman, Affleck has posted an e-mail on his official website, and, sure enough, the tabloids were printing pure fiction.

"As I'm sure most of you might infer, this story is absurd," he writes. "There is no Batman script, no movie being planned, they have not called me or my agent and Gwyneth is much more the 'Electra' type... I really have no idea where they get this stuff. It is as if someone sits in a room and quite literally invents it." Affleck is wrong on one thing however, there are known to be plans for a Batman 5, and the actor may yet be approached to don the rubber suit and furry ears.

Thai censors say No to Anna and the King

Thai censors have today upheld their ban on Anna and the King, a remake of The King and I which stars Jodie Foster as the English governess and Chow Yun-Fat as the King of Siam.

Several members of the Thai Royal Family saw the film last week, and although Queen Sirikit noted only two scenes which required editing she deferred the decision to the Thai censorship board who maintained that the film's portrayal of 19th century King Mongkut was inaccurate and insulting to the royal family. Police have now been ordered to seize any pirated copy of the films.

Bond saves the Dome

Ticket sales to the Millennium Dome are booming thanks to the latest Bond film, The World is Not Enough .

The opening sequence of the film, in which Pierce Brosnan has a high-speed boat chase up the Thames that finishes up at the Dome, has ensured that the £758m construction has become an "international icon", according to the marketing director, Sholto Douglas-Home.

In brief

Interest in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy continues to border on the obsessive. Fans can currently read an interview with the stunt team co-ordinator at theonering.net.

Harry over at Ain't it Cool News has got his hands on a meagre amount of plot information from the Samuel L Jackson Shaft remake.

Following the huge success of last year's Rugrats movie, Nickelodean have opened the official website for the cartoon tots next adventure, Rugrats in Paris. The movie is due for US release over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Casting couch

A host of Hollywood talent is lining up to direct the new Harry Potter film. Robert Zemeckis, Jonathan Demme, Brad Silberling, Rob Reiner, Mike Newell, and Tim Robbins are all said to have expressed interest in directing the adaptation of the children's books about a boy with magical powers who attends an elite school for wizards. But the director with first dibs is Steven Spielberg, who is keen to make an animated version of the literary phenomenon. He is expected to meet Warner Bros. executives and screenwriter Steve Kloves early next month to discuss the project.