There was a rumor going around that this President’s Day Steven Spielberg would finally announce a production start date for his long-awaited Abraham Lincoln biopic. No such luck. We’re still waiting to find out more about this intriguing project. All we know at this point is that Liam Neeson (who picked up an Oscar nomination the last time he worked with Spielberg, in Schindler’s List) is attached to star as the stovepipe-hat-wearing commander in chief; that Sally Field might end up playing Mary Todd Lincoln; and that Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner (who nabbed an Oscar nomination for writing Spielberg’s Munich) has been hard at work on a script, which will reportedly focus on the last two months of Lincoln’s life. What we were really hoping to find out today was who’ll be playing John Wilkes Booth, the Confederate loyalist who murdered Lincoln in 1865 during a play at Washington, D.C.’s Ford’s Theatre, then jumped onto the stage to take a bow before escaping into the night.

What makes that character so interesting, at least to us, is the fact that Booth was an actor. And not just any actor, but one of the most famous and successful of his day. To put it in 21st-century terms, it’d be as if George Clooney or Johnny Depp had been implicated in the assassination of a president. Come to think of it, either of those two stars would be perfect for the part, if they’d be willing to grow a Booth-esque mustache. Or maybe Spielberg should go for a JWB-style three-name thespian. Johnny Lee Miller,  perhaps? Or Daniel Day-Lewis? How about Sarah Jessica Parker?

What do you think, Pop Watchers? What contemporary actor do you want to watch kill the 16th president of the United States?

As if bankers don’t have enough of a PR problem these days. In The International, the new thriller by director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), Clive Owen plays an Interpol agent investigating IBBC, an evil international financial institution that commits a lot worse crimes than spending $12,000 on an executive wastebasket. Bankers have misbehaved on the screen before, of course, but it’s hard to imagine Milton Drysdale or Mr. Potter stooping so low as to sell Chinese arms to Syria, finance Congolese rebels, or assassinate an Italian politician. "The very essence of the banking system," one pin-stripped character ominously warns, "is to make us all slaves to debt."

Tykwer obviously couldn’t have anticipated the current anti-banker sentiment when he was shooting his film last year, but talk about lucky timing. His movie couldn’t be more topical if it included a subplot about octuplets and a pot-smoking Olympic swimmer. The film’s distributor, Columbia Pictures, certainly didn’t miss the opportunity to milk the banking backlash in its publicity, with taglines like, "They control your money. They control your government. They control your life. And everybody pays." It’s hard to get  more zeitgeisty than that.

And yet, The International’s opening box office was so dismal this weekend, it could qualify for a bailout. It came in seventh, earning only $10 million, behind even the fifth weekend of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The mostly subprime reviews didn’t help, but it was still a little surprising that more moviegoers weren’t intrigued by the film’s ripped-from-the-headlines plot. Maybe Columbia underestimated how unpopular bankers are these days; people don’t even want to invest $9.50 with them. Or perhaps Tykwer just didn’t make a thrilling enough thriller, no matter how timely it may be. What do you think, Pop Watchers — why didn’t you go see The International this weekend?