Croatia's Number One Brands

Via Roma Roma, news that Goran Višnjić has been offered the lead role in a forthcoming biopic of Ante Gotovina - to be directed by Antun Vrdoljak, the eminent Croatian director whose last major project, in which Višnjić also starred, tackled the period from the 1930s to the establishment of the socialist Yugoslav state.

When the Fund for the Truth About the Homeland War was founded in January this year to finance Gotovina's defence and carry out educational activities in the same vein, the president of Matica Hrvatska, Ivan Zidić, described Gotovina as 'the number one brand in the country' at its launch event. Millions of ER viewers, who have been entertained by Višnjić's smouldering Dr Luka Kovač for several seasons now, might disagree with that.

In fact, the Višnjić-Vrdoljak story has been going around Večernji list for several days now, and the newspaper is understandably quite pleased with itself for getting the report on to the BBC. The last time Večernji list came up with such an I-can't-believe-they-just-said-that idea for a collaboration, it was the one about Severina having a song arranged by Goran Bregović; and look what happened to that.

Vrdoljak described the concept of the film to VL on Monday:

'Goran and I have been working on a film project about General Ante Gotovina for a long time. We reached the idea in the moments of the first emotional shock, in the situation everyone knows when we had to defend a man like that. But the Gotovina story is a full-blooded film story, I'd say not just a political one but an action one according to all the rules of the genre, from the clearly-profiled central hero to the dramatic elements of the content, where one can present both the people and the events through film.'

Some anonymous Photoshoppers obviously reached the same conclusion just after Gotovina's arrest in December, adding his image to film posters ranging from We Were Soldiers to Troy and The Return of the King.

The Gazette was going to wrap up with a throwaway comment that the number-one-brandedness of the project could only be improved if Severina were to appear in the role of Gotovina's wife Dunja. But as it happens, Seve's one ahead of me.