Film-makers relaxed over epic Greek race

Not since the chariot race in Ben Hur has there been such keen interest in who would cross the finishing line first in an epic movie. Now one of the contestants in the competition to get a film about Alexander the Great to the screen first has thrown in the Macedonian equivalent of the towel.

For months, there has been talk in Hollywood about two competing, big-budget versions of the story, both with Oscar-winning directors and actors attached.

Oliver Stone, director of Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, is to direct one version, with Colin Farrell in the title role and Anthony Hopkins said to be playing Alexander's general, Ptolemy. The Australian director Baz Luhrman, who made Moulin Rouge, is to direct the other, with stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman.

Now Dino De Laurentiis, the producer of the Luhrman version, has said that his shooting will not start until April and the film will be released in 2005. This will bring Stone's version first into the cinemas in 2004: he has already shot his Himalayas scenes and is due to complete filming in Morocco by the end of the year. With a budget of £96m, 70 speaking roles and countless extras and special effects, De Laurentiis concluded there was no point in being first on the screen if the film was not ready.

His director agreed. "I am not going to be drawn into a race," Luhrman told the LA Times. The Luhrman film stars this week reinforced their commitment to the film - even if inevitably meant it would be referred to as Alexander the Late.

DiCaprio, meanwhile, said: "What most attracts me is the complex character of Alexander himself."

There has already been one Alexander the Great version; in 1956, Richard Burton, Claire Bloom and Stanley Baker starred in a film about the ruler. But many other plans to film the epic, including one by the director Martin Scorsese, became stuck in the sand. Jennifer Lopez had been scheduled to play Frida Kahlo in a different version from the one that won Salma Hayek an Oscar nomination this year, but plans were scrapped when the Hayek version went ahead.

But both sides in the race now on seem to feel there is room for all.

"Oliver [Stone] and I have always said that there's nothing wrong with two Alexander projects," said Moritz Borman of Intermedia, the producers of the Stone film.