Alec Baldwin to star in remake of John Cheever's The Swimmer

Alec Baldwin is set to star in a remake of the 1968 film The Swimmer, in which Burt Lancaster played a middle-aged advertising executive who embarks on a revelatory journey by swimming home through every backyard pool in his upscale neighborhood. A spring or summer 2004 start is being eyed. Ed Pressman and John Schmidt's ContentFilm banner will produce the project--based on a story by bisexual author John Cheever--along with Baldwin's El Dorado Pictures unit and Iron Films, headed by Vincent Farrell. The producers said Monday that the remake will stay "relatively faithful to the original," though the setting may shift to Baldwin's native Long Island from Connecticut.