Thank god for feminism. Why, if it wasn't for the decades-long struggle for equality and respect, we might not see films like Burlesque, the forthcoming offering from director Steve Antin about women who throw on their clothes and nearly miss.

The film, described variously as a "contemporary musical" and something between Cabaret and Moulin Rouge!, is the story of a young woman who tries to escape a "hollow past" (she's amnesiac?) and ends up working in a "neo-burlesque" club in LA. Somehow we suspect that they've already sent a copy of the script to Dita Von Teese to ask her to (at least) cameo.

Antin, who previously directed TV, co-created that paragon of post-feminist ideology The Pussycat Dolls: Search for the Next Doll and appeared as an actor in (amongst other things) The Goonies, also wrote the script. The good news is that so-hot-right-now screenwriter Diablo Cody, who did an excellent job on Juno, rewrote afterwards so perhaps we're being slightly unfair in assuming that this entire enterprise is nothing more than a very thinly disguised ruse to show young nubile types wearing very little. And neo-burlesque at least has an edge of cool missing from, say, the dances in Flashdance.

"Neo-burlesque is a contemporary take on the traditional burlesque that derived from vaudeville, with singing, dancing, comedy and more tease than striptease," Antin told Variety. Screen Gems studio president Clint Culpepper (and the Best Name in Showbiz Award goes to...), who's been trying to get a burlesque film going since he saw his first show a few years back, said that  the film will be "a sexy, music-filled film set in a provocative and artistic world."

So what do we think, Empireites? Does your muse wear a corset?