Steven Spielberg has been planning a biopic about our neckbeardiest president for years now, so when Robert Redford announced he was starting production next month on his own Lincoln flick (The Conspirator, with James McAvoy and Robin Wright Penn), Spielberg was all like “Yo, that’s pretty gay-berham, broheim.”  Ha, just kidding, he was all graciousness and fake smiles like a runner-up for Miss Hooters USA.

Spielberg tells me, “We are very happy that Redford will be doing this Lincoln movie. It is completely different from what our DreamWorks Lincoln movie will be, and we believe that it will add to the commercial potential of our film. Lincoln as a subject is inexhaustible.” [Variety]

Oh yeah, the ladies love Lincoln.  That’s why I’m always trying to slip them a fifthsky to keep them from pressing charges.

To be fair, the two projects do sound a bit different.

Spielberg’s Lincoln yarn reportedly was to focus on the president’s anguish over the length and toll of the Civil War. The script is being revised by Tony Kushner. [Variety]

[In Redford's movie,] Wright Penn will be playing Mary Surratt, the famous figure who aided in the assassination plot by handing off pistols and field glasses for the conspirators to pick up after the shooting as they made their way into hiding. She was the first woman ever executed by the federal government. McAvoy will be playing Frederick Aiken, the lawyer who took up her case and wrote a fairly cogent defense of the whole matter [her] despite the obviousness of her guilt. [FilmSchoolRejects]

Meanwhile, my sources tell me Mel Gibson is planning a Lincoln assassination flick of his own, tentatively titled Yep, the Jews Did It.