Moviehole confirmed today that a big screen version of The Greatest American Hero is being put on the fast track with a July start date. Director Stephen Herek has sent out a casting call to Hollywood's top agents. Apparently he is looking for some big names to play Hinkley and Maxwell. Personally, I think Mark Hamil and Harrison Ford in the roles would make this a must see film.

The script was written by Chris Matheson and Ryan Rowe. It will follow the adventures of a schoolteacher that is bestowed with a super hero costume by a group of aliens. He must defend the Earth from a group of intergalactic strip-miners.

Hinkley's casting description: 29-39, an all-around good guy, with boyish handsome good looks, smart, decent, honorable and resilient, Ralph is a high school history teacher in Tempe, Arizona, a bachelor who hasn't yet found the right girl. Selected by a bunch of aliens as the perfect hero to champion the rights of humankind against an evil nemesis, Ralph gets a superhero suit and a rather gruff squire in the form of FBI agent Bill Maxwell - neither of which yield easily to his control. Stuck inside the suit while awaiting for a duel-to-the-death challenge from his sinister opponent, Harve Lundy, Ralph proves to be honest, upright, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent as he prepares himself to do or die, without losing his Eagle Scout-ish honor or his suit in the process. Oh, and he gets a girlfriend along the way.

The film is set to shoot in Arizona this summer.