He's one of the film industry's greatest treasures, and if he wants to play the emperor of the Mongol hordes, who are we to stop him?

To happier places, now, with news of Lost in Showbiz untouchable Steven Seagal. Round here, any criticism of Seagal is punishable by broken wrist, while those of you who fail to respect his cinematic canon also risk being thrown through a window, or dispatched using an improvised weapon such as a pool ball in bar towel (Out For Justice) or a microwave (Under Siege).

Now that's done, our business today is with eternally doomed movie-star vanity projects. The second greatest of these is obviously Vin Diesel's multi-gazillion-dollar Hannibal epic, which will see the radioactively dim star of the Fast and Furious franchise assume the mantle of one of the greatest military commanders of all time, just so long as shortsighted movie producers stop passing on the idea.

But the first greatest of all the vanity projects is unquestionably Seagal's Genghis Khan epic, which the On Deadly Ground legend first mentioned in 1998. He even got around to writing a script, which he instantly burnished by attaching himself to the project as director and star. Since then? Well, it remains tantalisingly unproduced, despite various missions to China to scout locations and actors. Oh, and the mafia got involved. The usual.

So imagine my delight to read a dispatch from last week's 2nd International Action Film festival in the Kazakhstan capital Astana, at which Seagal appears to be combining guest-of-honour duties with his usual humanitarian commitments. Apparently, he told reporters that the US movie industry was in the doldrums – stay with this – and that he would now make the film with Russian and Kazakh cinematographers. "We are not only working on the plot, but also settling financial issues," he explained, adding that his friend, the mayor of Astana, was going to help him.

Do we dare to dream? On the form book, no. But having beaten the form book to a pulp with a corkscrew (Out For Justice), Lost in Showbiz is officially laying in popcorn.