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British actor Pierce Brosnan wants to sing ABBA songs with Meryl Streep. PHOTO: AFP

As an ABBA tribute band prepares to hit Taipei this weekend, Pierce Brosnan has become the latest star to sign up for the big-screen adaptation of hit ABBA musical Mamma Mia!, it was reported this week.

The Irish actor best known for his portrayal of British super spy 007 in the James Bond films will line up opposite two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep for the movie, Variety reported.

The film, which plays out to a soundtrack of hit songs from the Swedish group of the 1970s and 1980s, tells the story of a young woman trying to find out the identity of her father.

Brosnan, who will play one of the men summoned to a Greek island by the woman, told Variety he had leapt at the chance to star alongside Streep, with whom he is set to perform a duet.

"I said 'yes' right away because it meant working with Meryl Streep," Brosnan told Variety.

"Secondly, I saw the show with my family in London, and found it just so wonderfully happy and joyful, and so pitched in time forever in the 1970s.

Nigerian director Newton Aduaka. PHOTO: AFP

"What a kick in the pants, to be able to go off and spend time with Meryl on some Greek island, singing ABBA songs."

Since its opening in London in 1999, Mamma Mia has grossed more than US$2 billion in worldwide ticket sales, making it one of the most successful musicals of all time.

Meanwhile, screen heartthrob Matthew McConaughey will play a surfer caught in an existential crisis in his next film, it was reported this week.

The 37-year-old Texan star of A Time to Kill, Sahara and Failure to Launch, will spend the summer catching waves in Malibu, California, for the movie Surfer, Dude, movie industry Variety reported.

McConaughey, named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive in 2005, has been practicing his surfing while filming Fool's Gold in Australia recently, the report said.

Also with a new project are Spanish actress Penelope Cruz and British veteran Ben Kingsley who are to star in a big-screen adaptation of the steamy Philip Roth novella Dying Animal, it was reported Wednesday.

Cruz, nominated at last month's Oscars for her performance in Volver, will join Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson in the film, which will begin shooting in Vancouver next month, Variety reported.

The film tells the story of a student who engages in a torrid affair with her professor and then returns to confront him years later.

Tom Rosenberg, of producers Lakeshore, said the company had made adapting Roth's works for cinema a priority.

"He's one of the great American writers, and this one is squarely an adult story, with the kind of erotic scenes that hark back to the films of the 1970s," Rosenberg told Variety.

Nigerian director Newton Aduaka lifted the top prize at Africa's most prestigious film festival for Ezra, the tale of a child soldier who struggles to readapt after Sierra Leone's civil war.

Aduaka was awarded the Etalon d'Or de Yennenga, the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, at the closing ceremony of the Fespaco film festival in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou on Saturday.

The main character of the film, Ezra, passes his days between a rehabilitation clinic and a national reconciliation tribunal established by the UN.

At the tribunal, Ezra must face his sister who accuses him of murdering their parents, although he remembers nothing of what happened.

Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war, fuelled by "blood diamonds" sold by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels to buy arms, killed more than 200,000 people and left the former British colony in ruins.

The conflict was notorious for gangs of drugged children, often not yet teenagers, who killed, raped and mutilated their way across the West African country, hacking off victims' limbs.

A common initiation ritual was to force children to slaughter their own parents, making it impossible for them ever to return home.

Fespaco turns dusty Ouagadougou into the Cannes of Africa for a week. African directors often complain that funding is hard to secure and that distribution is difficult on a continent where most cinemas show Hollywood blockbusters and martial arts films.

The festival's second prize went to Cameroonian Jean Pierre Bekolo for Les Saignantes (The Bleeding), while Chad's Mahamat Saleh Haroun scooped third place with Darrat ("Dry Season").

Il va pleuvoir sur Conakry ("It's going to rain on Conakry") by director Cheik Fantamady Camara, a love story set amid political machinations of the Guinean capital, won the public's prize.

The film shows devout Muslims praying for rain, their call to prayer cynically manipulated by politicians eager to use religion to keep their people in check.

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