| Werner Herzog is pressing ahead with Queen Of The Desert, which follows the life of writer Gertrude Bell. He already has Naomi Watts lined up to play Bell and, in a move likely to trigger equal measures of excitement and frustration, has just snagged the services of Robert Pattinson to play T.E. Lawrence. The film will chart Bell’s adventurous life as a writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer and political attaché for the British Empire. She kicked all that off by becoming one of the first women to graduate from Oxford as the 20th century dawned. British army officer Lawrence, meanwhile, served as the inspiration for David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence Of Arabia, which starred Peter O’Toole as the man himself. So no pressure for Pattinson there, then… Lawrence and Bell were close contemporaries and worked together to establish the Hashemite dynasties in what became Jordan and Iraq. She also helped administer the modern Iraqi state. Herzog is looking to stay ahead of Ridley Scott, who is also developing a film about Bell. He needn’t worry too much, though: Scott has a multitude of projects on the go and Herzog is gearing up to shoot the film late in the autumn. Pattinson, last seen in Cosmopolis, will next show up in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, which arrives on November 16. Please stop screaming at the back. | 
