Exactly 30 years to the day that a group of militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and began a 444-day hostage crisis that doomed the administration of president Jimmy Carter, HBO Films has made a deal to turn the ordeal into a film.

HBO has acquired “Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis, The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam,” the book by “Black Hawk Down” author Mark Bowden.

Andrea Berloff, who scripted the Oliver Stone-directed “World Trade Center,” will adapt.

William Horberg will be executive producer.

Some 66 Americans were taken hostage on November 4, 1979 and weren’t freed until January, 1981. An event that began as an expression of student outrage over the U.S. decision to allow the ousted Shah of Iran into the country for medical treatment fueled the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and his hard-line cronies.

A rescue attempt ended disastrously, and the prolonged stalemate haunted the administration of President Jimmy Carter. As much as the crisis fueled a rise in fundamentalist Islam in Iran, it boosted the rise of the Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan, who defeated Carter in the election, promptly unfroze $8 billion in Iranian assets and took the bows when the hostages were freed. 

The Bowden book was first optioned in 2003 by Paramount for producer Scott Rudin, with the studio making a seven-figure commitment when Bowden had only written a two-page proposal.

Horberg, a producer of “The Kite Runner,” was the catalyst for the project’s resurgence.

“I was able to visit Tehran as part of the Academy delegation’s international outreach committed,” Horberg said. “I spent ten days there, screening films and meeting Iranian filmmakers. A couple of weeks after I was back and lunching with ICM agent Ron Bernstein and telling him about the trip, he said the rights to the Bowden book were free and clear. Mark writes these historically significant books that read like page-turners, and this 700-page yarn grips you from the moment those students climb over the gates. It is one of the most important defining political events of the last 40 years, the introduction of radical Islam to most people, and HBO seemed the only place to tackle this kind of epic political subject matter. And it’s still relevant.”

While TV series packages are getting harder to come by these days, ICM has a pretty good one to show studios and networks.

James Belushi has agreed to team with Diane English and Barry Levinson for an hourlong TV drama that will cast him as a defense attorney character modeled after the famed lawyer and TV commentator Mickey Sherman.

Belushi is coming off a long run in the ABC sitcom “According to Jim.“

Sherman wrote the memoir “How Can You Defend Those People?,” and the idea is for Belushi to play a likable prosecutor who defends the guilty and innocent with equal vigor.

English, the “Murphy Brown” vet returns to TV after writing and directed the Warner Bros. remake “The Women.” As for Levinson, Showtime this week premiered his docu “PoliWood,” about the convergence of celebs on the Democratic and Republican national conventions and its impact on the presidential campaign of 2008. Levinson, who featured Sherman in a cameo of his film “Man of the Year,” just directed for HBO the Jack Kevorkian pic “You Don’t Know Jack,” which stars Al Pacino as the controversial death dealer.

Belushi is repped by ICM and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

After directing Kiefer Sutherland through 59 heart-pounding episodes of “24,” co-exec producer Jon Cassar bowed out of the drama’s eighth season so he could direct a feature film.

Cassar has found a movie that is right in his wheelhouse. DreamWorks has hired him to direct “Motorcade,” a thriller about a disgraced Secret Service agent who happens to be in New York just as the President of the United States is kidnapped.

DreamWorks is eyeing for the lead Ryan Reynolds, who next stars as “Green Lantern” in the Martin Campbell-directed film for Warner Bros.

The thriller has rediscovered its momentum after being one of the films that Tom Cruise seriously considered but did not choose, when he opted to make “Wichita” with Cameron Diaz. “Live Free or Die Hard” director Len Wiseman left "Motorcade" soon after.

Producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald now hope to get underway by late summer or fall, and Billy Ray wrote the most recent draft of a script originated by Hans Bauer and Craig Mitchell. Paradigm reps Cassar.

ABC emerged from a three-network bidding battle to secure an untitled hour-long dramedy about a lovelorn lawyer that will be scripted by “Chuck” exec producer Ali Adler.

ABC, through Warner Bros. Television Studio, made a “put pilot” commitment for a potential series that will be exec produced by Adler, Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, Sheldon Turner and Jennifer Klein.

The project was inspired by a high-powered Los Angeles-based female attorney who specializes in divorce and family law. Deal called for her identity to be kept secret.

Adler, whose previous TV credits include “Family Guy” and “Commander in Chief,” will script a show whose female protagonist has observed enough misery in her divorce and family law practice to vow never to take the plunge.   

The project originated with Klein, a feature producer and acquaintance of the real attorney. She brought the idea to Turner, who wrote “Orbit,” a film she’s producing at Fox 2000. Turner, who most recently co-wrote “Up in the Air,” the Jason Reitman-directed comedy that stars George Clooney, got a law degree before he began writing scripts.

Klein and Turner enlisted Schwartz and Savage, the “Gossip Girl” co-creators, who turned to Adler. Deals becomes the second recent series project to grow out of Schwartz’s series creation “Chuck,” as Schwartz recently sold a half-hour comedy to CBS that he co-wrote with “Chuck” exec producer Matt Miller.

Adler, Schwartz and Savage are repped by WME, Turner and Klein by CAA. Fuse manages Schwartz.

Who knew that Cronkite also played a role in winning the war against the Colombian cocaine cartels?

Michael Caleo was just set by Luc Besson’s Europa Corp to write “Volcano,” a crime feature that focuses on the Bahamian island of Norman’s Cay, which was turned into a hedonistic fortress and the fulcrum of cocaine smuggling by Carlos Lehder, the right hand man of Medellin Cartel leader Pablo Escobar.

Caleo, an Emmy-nominated writer for “The Sopranos,” said that Cronkite figured into the drama after trying to land at the island on his yacht, only to find gunmen waiting for him at the dock.
 
“The island had been owned by vacationers, and one was Walter Cronkite and when he sailed in with his yacht, he was greeted by men with guns who would not let him on the island,” Caleo said.

An indignant Cronkite asked the guards, “Do you know who I am?”

Clearly they did not recognize the CBS news legend who told the country about the assassination of President Kennedy and Neil Armstrong's moon landing, because the thugs sent him scurrying to his boat, firing a few warning shots to get rid of him. That would prove costly to their boss.  
 
“About five years later, when the case went to court in Florida, when it looked like all the testimony came from ex-cons, the doors open and Cronkite walks up and takes the stand,” Caleo said. "Lehder was sentenced to 125 years.”

Caleo said that he is amalgamating Cronkite’s experience with that of a wealthy American whose plane crashed because Lehder's guards would not allow him to land. So in the film, Cronkite might be flying a plane instead of steering a yacht.

“Cronkite’s testimony really helped put an end to the cocaine wars, because when Ledher was gone, it became a different business,” said Caleo. 

Europa Corp’s Besson, who hatched the idea for the film, will produce with Virginie Besson Silla.

"Volcano" puts another Escobar-related film into development, one that might finally bring the Medellin Cartel story to the screen in a major way. There have been several attempts to film the story of the drug kingpin, most recently when "Narc" director Joe Carnahan developed the Mark Bowden book "Killing Pablo." We're still waiting for that film to happen--Carnahan veered off to direct "A Team" for Fox.

So far, the most compelling depiction of Escobar's rise and fall came in a mock movie that was part of the HBO series "Entourage."

HBO has set Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson to star in “The Sunset Limited,” an adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy play. Jones will direct.

McCarthy adapted his play his play into a script. Production will begin next month in New Mexico. 

Jackson plays a man who saves another man (Jones) from throwing himself in front of a Harlem subway. The act begins an exchange of ideologies as two men from different backgrounds debate the worth of their lives.

Barbara Hall will produce, and Jones will be executive producer.

Jones and Jackson previously worked together on “Rules of Engagement” and Jones moves into his third collaboration on a McCarthy-penned piece. Jones starred in the Coen Brothers-directed adaptation of “No Country for Old Men,” and Jones also adapted the McCarthy novel “Blood Meridian” as a feature script. 

McCarthy’s play “The Sunset Limited” opened in 2006 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre and moved off-Broadway later that year.

Jones just wrapped the John Wells-directed “The Company Men” with Kevin Costner and he’s adapting to star in and direct the Ernest Hemingway novel “Islands in the Stream.” Jackson just wrapped “Unthinkable” and “Mother and Child.” After he completes “The Sunset Limited,” he’ll star in “Vengeance: A Love Story.”

Jones is repped by CAA, Jackson by ICM.

Kate Winslet is attached to "Mildred Pierce," a miniseries adaptation based on the James M. Cain novel that Todd Haynes is writing and directing. Sources said that HBO is the lead contender to get the mini, but payweb sources said no deal has been struck.

Cain's tale was famously turned into a 1945 film that won Joan Crawford an Oscar for the lead role of a housewife whose husband leaves her, so to support her children and keep her house, she works turns her small home-based pie-baking business into a successful restaurant enterprise, and along the way gets tangled in ill-advised romance and murder.

The involvement of Winslet--right after her Oscar-winning performance in "The Reader" and her work in "Revolutionary Road"--underscores how much paywebs like HBO have become prestige venues for films that might vanish as theatrical releases, a fact underscored by the success of "Grey Gardens," which garnered Emmy noms for Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange.

Haynes directed "I'm Not There," "Safe" and "Far From Heaven."

Some late UTA news.

Agent Rob Kim will leave the agency to work with his client, Ed Bernero, the prolific writer/producer/director of such TV series as `Criminal Minds,' `Third Watch,' and `Washington Field.' 

Kim had been an agent with UTA for 17 years, starting in the mailroom of that percentery. Bernero will stay with the agency.

Separately, UTA has signed producer/director Penny Marshall.

HBO always knows how to throw a great bash, and how can you go wrong with a party for “Entourage?” The company annexed the Paramount lot to screen the first two segments of the new season, laying out a lavish spread to celebrate its unexpected Season Six (should that be Season Sex? – a plethora of cute young honeys were roving the scene.)

Of course, I find myself looking suspiciously around the corner at every HBO event, lest it be a cover for another “Entourage” spoof. At the super-glitzy premiere of “Grey Gardens,” I almost found myself in the midst of an “Entourage” shoot-around – the crew was furtively using the event as the mock premiere of “Martin Scorsese’s ‘Gatsby’”, which was used in the second segment of the new season. Vince is supposedly the star of the Scorsese picture and HBO obviously feels, why go to the expense of a staged premiere when you can “steal” a real one?

Talking with Doug Ellin, who runs the “Entourage” entourage, I heard his eagerness to explore new dimensions of his characters and rely less on “inside” Hollywood jokes. I admire his aim, but worry about its execution: His cast of characters are creatures of a frat house culture. From episodes one and two, it’s clear that even living on their own is a major emotional hurdle they may not conquer. And as for Ari Gold – well, he’s Ari Gold.

So, I don’t know if President Obama truly is an “Entourage” admirer, as HBO purports, but I know that I am. Hence, I’m curious what Ellin and his talented writers have in mind.

Will Vince develop a tortured Brando complex? Will “E” learn he’s not a womanizer, but is really gay? Will Ari follow his mentor, Ari Emanuel, and buy a major agency?

OK, I’ll stay turned.