STEVEN SODERBERGH - SODERBERGH: CLEO WILL BE LIKE AN ELVIS MUSICAL

SODERBERGH: CLEO WILL BE LIKE AN ELVIS MUSICAL

Steven Soderbergh has said his planned film about Cleopatra will be similar to "an Elvis musical".

It was reported earlier this week that the Ocean's Eleven director hopes to pair the Catherine Zeta Jones with Hugh Jackman in Cleo, a $30 million rock 'n' roll musical.

And speaking at the premiere of Che, his four-hour biopic of the Argentinean revolutionary, Soderbergh said the ambitious project about the Egyptian queen would be "really fun".

"I've always wanted to do a musical, I felt like a female protagonist was probably a good idea, because the majority of the audiences for musicals are female," he told reporters at the Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival.

"I started thinking about Catherine because I knew she could sing and dance and the list [of possible subjects for the film] got pretty short at that point.

"I know Cleopatra stole that haircut from Louise Brooks, but Catherine looks great in it," he joked.

The director confirmed Jackman is not yet attached to the film but Soderbergh is hopeful of securing his signature.

"I want him to be [involved], we're trying to work it out," he told inthenews.co.uk.

"I guess Wolverine is opening in 2010 so he'll have the publicity tour for that, but I definitely want him."

After hitting the red carpet in London's West End for the Che premiere, the 45-year-old Oscar winner revealed the two-part film had been seven years in the making.

"[Guevara] is one of the key figures of the last century and I think he's worth looking at," he added.

"Certainly his ideas are always worth looking at. They're still alive and that's why people are still arguing about him."

Che won leading man Benicio Del Toro the best actor award at the Cannes film festival and is released in February.