HOLLYWOOD -- Vin Diesel still dreams of elephants and Alps.

For the past decade, the action star has talked about his plans to play Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who rode an elephant across the Alps to attack Rome in the third century BC.

The Hannibal project floundered after Diesel refused the sequels to his hit movies The Fast and the Furious and XXX in favour of his pet sci-fi project The Chronicles of Riddick.

Now he insists Hannibal is back on track.

"I've begun training again for the role and I now have the budget trimmed to where it's workable," says Diesel, whose family comedy The Pacifier opens Friday.

He seems to have learned from the failure of Oliver Stone's Alexander and the criticism levelled at Wolfgang Petersen's Troy.

"I've worked with the writers to hone the story so that we'll be doing a creative portrait of Hannibal as opposed to trying to tell every historical signpost in the Hannibal journey."

To preserve the vision he has for the film, Diesel has also decided to direct the epic.

"I don't want to jinx our plans by being too specific, but if we keep our fingers crossed, we're going to try and get started this year," says Diesel, who admits he's "had meetings with Mel Gibson and some other producers so things really are happening this time."

- According to Shia LaBeouf, a dark menace visited the set of Constantine where he plays Keanu Reeve's chauffeur and sidekick Chas Chandler.

"It was in the mausoleum set," says LaBeouf, whose films include Holes, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, I, Robot and The Battle of Shaker Heights.

"There was a corner that was dimly lit. Anyone who spent any amount of time there just seemed to lose their energy. People got sick. People got depressed if they spent too much time in that area."

LaBeouf, 17, stayed his distance, so has only happy memories of his time filming Constantine.

"Chas Chandler was not the comic relief in the graphic novels, but that's what he evolved into for the movie," explains LaBeouf.

"I think that's because Keanu was so into being his character and that proved to be a dark place.

"Djimon Hounsou is naturally intense and Tilda Swinton is a classically trained actress who's very serious about everything she's doing.

"That left me as this little guy running around being the most human character and therefore the eyes of the audience."

LaBeouf auditioned for the role of Clark Kent's sidekick, Jimmy Olsen, in Superman Returns, but lost to Sam Huntington, 22, the star of Jungle 2 Jungle and Sleep-over.

LaBeouf hasn't had time to mourn that loss.

He's been busy perfecting his golf swing for the movie The Greatest Game Ever Played, in which he plays Francis Ouimet, the first amateur to ever win the U.S .Open.

"Bill Paxton is directing. I had to train for six months before we began shooting," recalls LaBeouf.

- John Travolta insists Vince Vaughn is one of the funniest people he's ever met.

"Vince hits my funnybone like no one else," says Travolta, who first teamed up with Vaughn for the tense thriller Domestic Dilemma.

The two are co-stars in Be Cool, which opens Friday.

"Vince has humour in his soul. He's like Robin Williams in that when you get him started there's no stopping him. He can look at me and I start laughing."

Travolta says Vaughn had him reduced to tears of hilarity several times during the filming of Domestic Disturbance.

"It was me who couldn't contain myself, but Vince got blamed for our laughing fits. I didn't confess until the last day of shooting."

Vaughn gets to exercise his comic chops in his next film, The Wedding Crashers, when he and Owen Wilson play a pair of womanizing friends who attend wedding banquets to benefit from the feeling of romance that's in the air.

- Lance Khazei, who wrote the family comedy Son of the Mask, has written and will produce Romantic Comedy.

"It's about a guy who watches famous romantic comedies to learn how to woo the girl of his dreams," says Khazei, who was a writer for the TV show Politically Incorrect.

He originally offered the role of the girl to Sandra Bullock, but she was already committed to several projects.

"For a while it was going to be Kate Hudson and Colin Farrell," says Khazei, who has finally signed Sarah Michelle Gellar for the female lead.

Her husband, Freddie Prinze Jr., was considering co-starring but he is now concentrating on developing a TV sitcom for himself.

"Both Owen Wilson and his brother Luke Wilson have looked at the script and have expressed interest," says Khazei, who hopes to begin filming later this year.