ODD PAIRING FOR HOPKINS

The over-hyped 33-year-old, whose career is flourishing in America, is lined up to reprise Dudley Moore’s alcoholic ladies’ man in classic Eighties’ movie Arthur.

Warner Brothers studio bosses are, we hear, determined to sign up Welsh hellraiser turned model US citizen Sir Anthony Hopkins as wise-cracking butler Hobson, memorably played in the original by Sir John Gielgud.

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A source close to the film’s producers reveals: “There’s no one finer, we think, than Hopkins for that role. He exudes everything the Americans love about Brits; refined, charming, educated, well-spoken. We will give our best offer, and then some, to get him.”

Perhaps surprisingly, lothario Brand wants to bring back the film’s original leading lady Liza Minnelli, 63, rather than drafting in a nubile Hollywood lovely.

“She is playing the love interest,” he declares.

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, that’s my motto.”