By Jay A. Fernandez

Stacey Snider and Steven Spielberg’s Martin Luther King Jr. feature project is finally moving forward. The DreamWorks Studios toppers have hired Oscar-winning playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood (”The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) to pen a biographical screenplay about the slain civil rights leader.

Harwood is a strong choice for the assignment. His script work on “The Dresser,” “Butterfly” and “The Pianist” earned him Oscar nominations, with the last taking the prize. And at 75 years old, the South Africa-born writer lived through the late 1950’s and ’60’s, when King’s oratory and influence inspired a massive civil rights movement until his murder in 1968.

As the studio points out, this is the first film treatment of King to be officially authorized by the King Estate — or a portion of it, at least, since some of the King children balked when the project was announced last year. So Harwood will have access to all the intellectual property King copyrighted during his lifetime, including speeches, books and other works.

“His record of achievements makes him particularly suited to portraying this deeply personal story against the background of such a turbulent time,” said Mark Sourian and Holly Bario, who run production at the studio.

Harwood, who is repped by ICM and Judy Daish in the U.K., also penned a TV movie about Nelson Mandela and adapted the Alan Paton book, “Cry the Beloved Country,” among other film work.

Spielberg, who has directed biographical and historical material in “Schindler’s List,” “Amistad” and “Munich,” is not attached to helm the MLK project. But he is producing along with Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones. Spielberg also has long been developing an Abraham Lincoln biopic.

Americans celebrated the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday yesterday. King was born on January 15.

By Jay A. Fernandez and Borys Kit

In a competitive-bidding environment, DreamWorks Studios has picked up a pitch from screenwriter Andrea McCloud called “I Saw You.”

Based on a comics anthology edited by Julia Wertz, the pitch involves four intersecting love stories derived from missed-connections ads. George Tillman Jr. is developing the project to direct.

The pitch sale was in the mid-six figures.

State Street Pictures partners Tillman, Bob Teitel and Matthew Pritzker originally optioned the book. Tillman and Teitel will produce; Pritzker and Wertz will executive produce. Rene Rigal will co-produce.

Wertz’s “I Saw You…” collected comics based on real-life missed-connection ads run on Craigslist and in local papers. Random House’s Three Rivers Press imprint published the trade paperback in February.

The emsemble romantic comedy has become a subgenre unto itself lately, with films such as “Love Actually,” “He’s Just Not That Into You” and the forthcoming “Valentine’s Day” using the intertwining-storyline format.

As it moves back into film production, the newly independent DreamWorks is fashioning a number of potential comedy projects. The studio has in development Chris McCoy’s untitled college-set comedy; Mike Culbert and Mike Pellettieri’s workplace comedy “Forever 21,” with Elizabeth Banks attached to star; Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s comedy about a stranded reality TV star, “Cal of the Wild”; and Michael Besman, Michael Zam and Jaffe Cohen’s action comedy, “Wife vs. Ninja.”

McCloud, a relative newcomer who is repped by WME and Energy Entertainment, wrote “Cover Your Assets” for Lionsgate. The writer originally drew buzz for her screenplay, “ABBIE+WEBBER 4EVER.”

The CAA-repped Tillman directed “Notorious,” “Men of Honor” and “Soul Food.”

By Borys Kit

Less than a month after beaching “Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” new Walt Disney chief Rich Ross has put the kibosh on “Wedding Banned,” a romantic comedy to have starred Robin Williams, Anna Faris and Diane Keaton.

The studio has put the project into turnaround, and the production company, Mandeville Films, is free to shop it around town.

“Banned” revolves around a long-divorced couple (Williams and Keaton) who kidnap their daughter (Faris) on her wedding day to prevent her from making the same mistakes they did. The parents rekindle their relationship as they elude cops and the angry groom.

The movie was being groomed for a shoot in 2010, but this week Ross made the decision to untether the project. One factor in the decision was the poor showing of the Robin Williams comedy “Old Dogs,” which has grossed just $35 million since its November 25 opening.

The decision to put “Banned” into turnaround has Disney-ites wondering what exactly constitutes a Disney studio movie in the Ross era, especially since “Banned” seemed to be in the mold of other studio hit comedies such as “The Proposal” and “Wild Hogs.”

By Steven Zeitchik

Looks like the DreamWorks deal is finally done. The Reliance-funded company will have more than $1 billion to play with for its planned slate of as many as ten pics per year.

Next up are of course the distribution question (odds-on money is still on Universal, though don’t be surprised if another distrib steps up with a sweetened deal) and which staffers make the jump. Paramount on Friday eliminated some of the potential unpleasantness and bureaucracy by releasing any employee under contract.

The less-discussed but equally critical question is which projects live and die in the transition. Agents and producers have been on tenterhooks for months as they wait for the company’s status to be determined, and a lot of scripts and pitches have waited in limbo with them. Those agents, writers and producers are probably the happiest people (besides all the principles) that this is finally moving toward a conclusion.

The story with more legs than a genetically engineered octopus — whither Spielberg and DreamWorks after 2008? — is back, and it’s swimming with some ferocity.

As Carl DiOrio reported in THR earlier this week, there are now some good indications and reasons that Spielberg-Snider-Geffen could stay at Paramount after all.

“There’s also considerable consensus that while things might not have worked out as swimmingly as Spielberg hoped, much has been done to address his most serious misgivings,” DiOrio writes, adding that “issues of money and, well, respect have been dealt with sufficiently to characterize the current situation as not so much Spielberg feeling driven to leave the lot as simply his wanting to take stock of what might be on offer from others.”

In other words, the chatter on both sides (including Philippe Dauman’s famous “no material impact” from last year) is pre-negotiaton posturing more than a prelude to an exit.

Of course, as DiOrio and others write, Spielberg could take advantage of a still-open pipeline (if not for much longer) of equity and hedge fund-money to start a new (read: old) DreamWorks, one that could be combined with a currently independent DreamWorks Animation and be free of corporate bureaucracy and influence. “In the banking community, there’s already talk that Spielberg might look for funding to begin rebuilding DreamWorks for life after Par,” DiOrio writes.

Then 10 years later he could sell it to a studio, run it under rocky condiitions for a few years and then leave to start an independent company with the help of investor money.

By Steven Zeitchik

Ever since Philippe Dauman turned the phrase“completely immaterial” from Wall Street wonk into fighting words, it’s been a game of reading tea leaves to determine whether DreamWorks will stay at Paramount after the company’s contract expires at the end of ‘08.

Add this to the tasseography.

In an interview with Stacey Snider after the announcement of the Golden Globe noms, Risky Biz asked the DreamWorks CEO how she felt given that, by the next Globes, DreamWorks could be packing off for another studio.

Snider responded by describing a “warm” rapport with those who work on its films at Paramount and Paramount Vantage. “Our day-to-day relationship with people who are in the trenches couldn’t be better.”   Then she gave shout-outs to a number of execs, like Vantage’s Megan Colligan and Nick Meyer and Par’s recently upped John Lesher.

True, it was the traditional post-nomination call, when the focus is on the films, not the larger corporate reality. But it was nonetheless interesting that Snider didn’t single out Viacom higher-ups, and the carefully worded endorsement may be an indicator of how DreamWorks execs will handle the potentially awkward situation of spending the next twelve months based at a company top brass have expressed misgivings about.

After all, DreamWorks still needs Paramount to release some important films in the next year–including awards-ready fare like “Sweeney Todd” and more commercial pics like the Ricky Gervais romantic comedy “Ghost Town.” Snider’s carefully crafted shout-out is a vote of confidence in those who release those movies, and further ensures that the movies will get love. But by leaving the bosses out, she may also simultaneously be leaving the door open to other suitors like Universal and Warners–and providing one more tea leaf to read.