- guardian.co.uk, Thursday May 22 2003 08.26 BST
Quentin Tarantino's producers are in talks with the Premier League about setting the first of the £45m-plus trilogy in a real top-flight northern club.
Goal!, which will start shooting this summer, will follow a young Latino from south central Los Angeles who comes to England to play in the Premiership.
Producer Mike Jefferies said: "No one has ever made a big soccer movie. Up until now we have had small parochial stories, and no one has used real star players the way we will."
Pioneering techniques will let the "camera right into the action for the first time", he said, adding that the "meat of the story will be carried by actors but we will have very big name cameos from the game".
In the first film, the young American player will face "a fish-out-of-water struggle to adapt from life in LA to winter in a northern city", Jefferies said, while in the second he will join a continental club.
The last in the trilogy will coincide with the World Cup finals in 2006 in Germany.
Meanwhile, leading British film distributor Hamish McAlpine has been arrested by French riot police after joining a French public sector workers' protest at Cannes.
