By Jay A. Fernandez and Matthew Belloni

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s annual Golden Globes festivities will take over the Beverly Hilton Hotel January 17.

That’s less than a week from now! And it’s never too early to map out your pre- and after-party attack.

The Beverly Hilton will once again be the Big Top under which the various celebrity circuses will sparkle and whirl, spilling one into the next. So below is a partial list of locations for all your cocktail and canoodling needs.

First, though, are a couple of scene-setters in the days leading up to the big event.

(Be sure to check back for updates, as more events and relevant commentary are sure to be added.)

By Jay A. Fernandez

The Coen Bros. and Paramount have launched their search for the young female lead in their remake of “True Grit.”

Here’s the link, which announces the casting search for a girl between the ages of 12 and 17 to play the 14-year-old Mattie Ross. Aspirants can apply by self taping or by attending an open call in Arkansas, Mississippi or Oklahoma in the coming weeks.

The “tough as nails” character tags along with two marshals — to be played by Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon — in the hunt for the man who killed her father — to be played by Josh Brolin.

Included on the casting site is a three-page scene from the script, which the Coen brothers adapted from the Charles Portis novel.

By Borys Kit

Detective Alex Cross might be making a return to Hollywood, but it won’t be with the studio that brought him to the screen.

James Patterson’s popular character is at the center of “Cross,” a project being shopped around town. Based on one of Patterson’s books, the package features a screenplay by Kerry Williamson and Patterson, with Lloyd Levin attached to produce along with James Patterson Entertainment’s Steve Bowen.

The players have met with Summit, Sony, Lionsgate, Overture and others during the past couple of weeks. One potential buyer not on the list is Paramount, which made Cross’ first two outings, 1997’s “Kiss the Girls” and 2001’s “Along Came a Spider,” based on Patterson’s first two books. Both starred Morgan Freeman as Cross.

Patterson retained the rights to his books, of which there are now 16. They have sold millions of copies, generating more than $2 billion in worldwide sales.

When Patterson and his company approached Paramount with the opportunity to adapt “Cross” — the 12th book, which acts as an origin story and sees Cross as a much younger man early in his career trying to find his wife’s murderer — the parties couldn’t come to an agreement.

That prompted Patterson Entertainment to develop the screenplay on its own. The author, a film buff who sees four or five movies a week, decided to take a crack at writing the screenplay, in the process partnering with Levin (“Watchmen”) and deciding to self-finance the movie and make it independently.

The plan now is to shoot the movie in the first half of next year, depending on director and cast, then secure a distribution partner.

Thrillers are making a bit of a comeback in development circles. “Taken” made Liam Neeson an unlikely star while taking in $226 million worldwide, and most recently “Law Abiding Citizen” took in $72 million domestically.

By Jay A. Fernandez and Borys Kit

Colum McCann’s National Book Award-winning novel “Let the Great World Spin” looks to be coming to a rest at Bad Robot.

J.J. Abrams is working out a rights deal to spin a feature from McCann’s sprawling period piece. Abrams would produce, with McCann adapting the screenplay himself, at Paramount, where Bad Robot resides. The Gotham Group, which reps McCann, will produce along with Bad Robot.

“Spin,” McCann’s fifth novel, was published by Random House in June. Built around Philippe Petit’s real-life “artistic crime of the century” — when the Frenchman illegally walked a tightrope strung between the World Trade Center towers in August 1974 — “Spin” follows an ensemble cast of characters struggling throughout the city.

A young Irish monk living among the prostitutes in the Bronx; a group of mothers mourning their sons, killed in Vietnam, in a Park Avenue apartment; and a 38-year-old grandmother walking the streets with her teenaged daughter are among the book’s characters. With comparisons to Don DeLillo’s work, McCann’s novel serves as an allegory of 9/11 and its aftermath.

“Spin” joins a handful of other projects Abrams has in the works as a producer that spring from literary source material and do not feed his typical genre obsessions. Also at Bad Robot and Paramount are an untitled diamond heist project derived from a Joshua Davis article in Wired and “Mystery on Fifth Avenue,” from a New York Times article about a family’s Manhattan apartment that was designed as a giant puzzle.

Paramount will release the original Bad Robot comedy “Morning Glory,” starring Harrison Ford, Rachel McAdams and Diane Keaton, in July.

The Dublin-born McCann co-wrote with director Gary McKendry the short film “Everything in This Country Must,” which was nominated for the best live-action short film Oscar in 2004. The author currently teaches at Hunter College in New York.

McCann is also the author of “Zoli,” “Dancer,” “This Side of Brightness,” “Fishing the Sloe-Black River” and “Songdogs.”

By Steven Zeitchik

Eddie Murphy could be feeling fluffy.

The A-lister is attached to produce and could potentially star in “The Misadventures of Fluffy,” a new buddy comedy that’s been set up at Paramount.

Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly sold the pitch for the R-rated comedy and will write the script. The project is described as a road trip pic through New York featuring talking animals, and with an element of social comedy reminiscent of Murphy’s 1980’s hit “Trading Places.”

Insiders emphasize that while Murphy is formally attached to produce, he is not formally attached to star at this point.

Pitman and Cole-Kelly, repped by WME and Management 360, came to prominence with a project called “The Diversification of Noah Miller,” a race-themed story about a man who tries to bring cultural enlightenment to his son by befriending people of another race. Tyler Perry is attached to produce and potentially star in that project.

By Steven Zeitchik

Is there a studio in a more complicated position than Paramount? The Melrose lot already has one of the summer's biggest hits and is set to release what will almost assuredly be the biggest — and yet it's facing more shapeshifting unknowns than Sam Witwicky.

First, the company endured a massive leadership shakeup when Brad Weston and former It Boy John Lesher were ousted Friday (more on that in a moment). And now, thanks to TMZ, an e-mail has surfaced in which one of their biggest moneymaking directors slams them over marketing.

"Transformers" helmer Michael Bay, never shy about making his feelings known (or boasting about his own spending), called out Paramount about six weeks ago for a print and television approach that was "tepid and ineffective," "lame" and an "abject failure" (according to him).

Bay cited Jerry Bruckheimer — not on this issue but on the danger of under-marketing in general — cleverly signaling that he had friends in high places and the studio better step it up. (Bay eventually made nice with the studio, according to a later e-mail dug up by TMZ.)

Leaving aside the merits of the criticism — Par did take out a Super Bowl ad and kept the momentum going with a strategic trailer rollout, though until recently you could argue that from a certain distance the prerelease blitz did seem a little weak by mega-tentpole standards — we wonder what effect the words of a prized director, rabblerousing as he is, has on the perception of a studio.

By Steven Zeitchik

That sound you hear is the sound of women the world over rejoicing at the fact that a studio is getting going on "Eat, Pray, Love," Elizabeth Gilbert's story of post-breakup nirvana that was a legal obligation for all women under the age of fifty to read.

Columbia is signing the project, picking it up from Paramount, and is about to attach a host of talent, including Julia Roberts to star and Ryan Murphy to direct. (Brad Pitt's Plan B is producing.)

It's a hot property and has a built-in audience, which makes it a little odd that Par is putting it in turnaround. But when you look at the studio's slate it's easy to see why. The studio is going male, male and more male — see under G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers  and other tender romantic comedies.

We've read part of Gilbert's book for reasons too complicated (read: emasculating) to explain, and it's a lot more sophisticated than the average chick fodder Hollywood tries to spin into a bigscreen buck, insightful and well-written. Which means it will be a lot harder to turn into a good movie.

By Steven Zeitchik

If you turned Benjamin Button around and, following both the conceit of the movie and the trajectory of its main character, watched it from end to beginning, you’d wind up with the same assessment as if you watched it the normal way: really strong, a little saggy, really strong.

For about forty-five minutes the concept takes you by storm (and makes your head hurt, in a good way), with the narrative and visual inventiveness not seen in an American film in a long time (at least one not made by Charlie Kaufman, anyway). The movie (some spoilers below) droops a little after that, as Button begins to make his discoveries out in the world.

But it rebounds powerfully in its final hour as the doomed love story (he’s getting younger, she’s getting older, and they can only be in love for a few years in the middle) finally takes flower and as Button reaches the end (that is, the beginning) of his life.  It winds down on a note of melancholy that will break your heart  (and make it, frankly, a slightly tougher sell than expected as a popcorn entertainment while winning it, undoubtedly, scores of awards supporters. Fincher — more from him in another post shortly — quipped in a post-screening talk Saturday: “All those big blockbuster themes — death, loneliness.”)

There are a few small flaws. A frame story about Hurricane Katrina might have felt organic as the New Orleans-set film was being made but feels a little out of place here. And Pitt’s acting and character are, contrary to how you might expect material like this to be handled, actually a little understated. We come in expecting moments of easy point-scoring, even broad comedy, as a man who looks old but thinks young fights to adjust to the world. Fortunately, there’s little of that. But the picture actually tips a little too far the other way — the idea of a teenage septuagenarian or a wise teenager is existentially wacky, and there could have been more fun had with that.

But these are small flaws. The movie delivers on pretty much every other level — it’s funny, thought-provoking, stylish, human, artful but not inaccessible. Even when it’s taking some obvious cues, you won’t mind.

The comparison most likely to make the rounds is Forrest Gump, and there’s something to it –  a kind of blank-slate main character who things seem to happen to; a life-changing experience in a war he didn’t intend to be in; persistently raised questions about fate and destiny; a lifelong love who’s as much an idealized version of beauty as she is the real thing; and a strong single mother (complete with her own aphorism about life’s unexpectedness to rival any box of chocolates line).

The comparison that also could be made is to another great work of art this season, the aforementioned Charlie K and his “Synecdoche, NY.” In each, we’re watching a man with a tragic air hovering above him move through his life and loves, ultimately knowing that in both cases, the man is doomed.

But this won’t matter. There’s much that’s original here — mythic storytelling, colorful atmosphere, philosophical depth, textured relationships — to trip over anything else. Plus there’s the visual panache that comes in the form not just of the older and younger versions of Brad Pitt but the period touches, often told in the style of various old movies. Doomed romance has never looked this good. Ditto for a big-budget, star-driven studio love story.