A 1994 plot description of Janet Evanovich's One for the Money, available over at Amazon, notes "Film rights optioned to Tri-Star." It's been a long, long road and a revolving door of studios to get there, but it looks like the first of Evanovich's "Plum" series is finally getting made, with Katherine Heigl in the lead as the lingerie-saleswoman-turned-bounty-hunter.

Variety writes that Columbia Pictures and Lakeshore Entertainment, the same people who brought you Heigl in The Ugly Truth, will produce the film, with the writing team of Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith also back on board. Given that One for the Money is about an independent and brave heroine, hopefully Lutz and Smith will avoid making her as shrill and unreasonable as Heigl's character in The Ugly Truth. Please, God, I couldn't go through that again.

Heigl is becoming the go-to female lead in so many movies almost by default, since no one else seems all that interested in taking on the "next Meg Ryan" mantle. And while Heigl vacillates wildly onscreen between seeming smart and capable and irritating as all hell, I kind of like the idea of her ditching the romantic stuff entirely and just going super-spy. But I know plenty of you out there are already so fed up with her that you'll tune out no matter what happens. Anyone else looking forward to a kind of career shift here?