He's been touring, singing R&B and doing standup comedy for six months. So what's next for Jamie Foxx? Would you believe violin and cello lessons?

It's prep for The Soloist -- the story of Juilliard prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, who dropped out of school with schizophrenia and ended up living under a bridge in L.A.

The Soloist is a followup feature for director Joe Wright, whose film Atonement drew raves at the Venice and Toronto film fests.

"A guy from the L.A. Times, Steve Lopez, has a wreck on his bicycle, hears this beautiful music coming from a violin with two strings. And he sees this guy and writes a story about him," Foxx says. "The next thing you know they have this bond and it's beautiful.

"When he plays, that's how he drowns out the voices in his head," says Foxx, who expects to start filming by the beginning of 2008. "You have a voice in your head that tells you you gotta get home and clean up, or whatever. Imagine having 12 voices in your head at the same time."

KINGDOM'S DIFFERENT ENDING: Is it still a spoiler if we tell you how a movie didn't end? No one here can agree, but we know how people are, so... SPOILER ALERT!

If you've seen the Jamie Foxx/Jennifer Garner Islamo-terrorist action thriller The Kingdom, you already know how the movie ends. But what you don't know is that in its original scripted version, it had a subplot in which the "good Muslim" cop named Hatham (Ali Suliman) was conflicted about working with Americans.

"His brother was killed in Iraq fighting the Americans, his father was a strict Wahabbist, and during the course of the film he's cracking," director Peter Berg says.

"And at the end, Jamie, Jennifer and Jason (Bateman) all shook his hand, and Chris Cooper went to hug him and he had a bomb on him and it detonated and the entire team dies.

"So I read it in, like, the middle of the night, and I got to the end and I called (producer) Michael Mann and he said, 'I just read it' (the ending), and I said, 'Well, can we do it?' And he said, 'NO-O-O!' And then I got the call from (then Universal Chair) Stacey Snider and she said, 'Are you out of your mind? Not in my studio!'

"So then I had the job of calling Matt (Carnahan, the writer) and he started screaming and calling me a coward and a sellout and I said, 'I know, but I promise you there's impact at the end."

Hollywood-friendly impact, but impact nonetheless.

FANS DECIDE FOR THE ROCK: The Rock had an epiphany at this year's Comic Con. Namely, that some women really shouldn't wear Princess Leia's slave outfit. No wait -- that was my epiphany.

The Rock's epiphany was that he should let the fans decide if he should star in New Line's forthcoming adaptation of Shazam! And he wants them to let him know which character he should play -- the hero, Capt. Marvel, or the villain, Black Adam.

"To me, it's up to them to deem who is appropriate," says Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock). "I told (director Peter Segal), 'You know, it's not up to us, it's up to the fans.' "

The comic book concerns a boy, Billy Batson, who -- upon bellowing the magical word "Shazam!" -- is transformed into a crimson-clad superhero. Not surprisingly, the project has been described as "Big in tights," referring to the 1988 Tom Hanks comedy in which a kid is propelled into adulthood overnight. Either way, it sounds like Johnson is a go for the flick. And even MTV has taken his populist bait. Its website is asking fans to vote on whether he should play good or evil.

GAME NOT OVER? We're probably days away from a freaking Black Lightning movie being announced, so if Hollywood is so starved for ideas, why is the Halo movie a non-starter? Because, believe it or not, there are no takers among Hollywood's major studios. Did we mention Peter Jackson wants to produce it? (Although his choice of director, newcomer Neill Blomkamp, is said to be a point of contention for executives who would prefer to see, say, Ridley Scott behind the camera.) When Jackson last spoke about the comatose film, he was optimistic the deafening buzz surrounding the Halo 3 video game might generate some momentum. At press time, though, Halo: The Movie remains stubbornly in stasis.