Brad Makes "Peace" with Billy Bob

Fri., Jun. 17, 2005 2:40 PM PDT by Sarah Hall

Brad Pitt and Billy Bob Thornton have something in common. And we're not talking about a certain sexy someone.

The two thesps have joined forces for the upcoming Warner Bros. film, Peace Like a River, about a family whose confrontations with neighborhood thugs turn deadly.

Thornton is slated to star, while Pitt will produce the film under his Plan B Productions slate.

The film is an adaptation of the Leif Enger book by the same name. A director has not yet been attached to the project.

Besides their impending coworker status, Pitt and Thornton just might share a little something else in common.

As most people not living under rocks are aware, Pitt currently stars in the box-office hit Mr. and Mrs. Smith opposite Angelina Jolie, with whom he's rumored to be romantically involved.

Jolie was previously wed to Thornton, but the pair split up in 2002 after a two-year union that began on the set of Pushing Tin. Their divorce was finalized in 2003.

On the topic of ex communication, Pitt's own soon-to-be former wife, Jennifer Aniston, has been busy shooting down rumors that she told Vanity Fair magazine that Pitt ruined her dreams of starting a family by cheating on her.

On Wednesday, the New York Post reported that Aniston, infuriated by Pitt and Jolie's 60-page promotional spread in W magazine that depicts them as a married '60s-era couple complete with a bevy of tykes, dished to Vanity Fair about her husband's alleged infidelity.

"Jen did want babies and starting a family wasn't the issue," a source told the Post, regarding Aniston's Vanity Fair interview. "The issue was Brad cheated and she's appalled by the 'family photos' coming out in W magazine."

However, according to both Aniston's rep, Stephen Huvane and Vanity Fair, the report is completely false.

Both Huvane and Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak told the Los Angeles Times that Aniston met with magazine writer Leslie Bennetts well in advance of the W spread because they already knew each other from the first time Aniston did the cover. However, the main interview for the story on the former Friends star has not yet taken place.

"Page Six is wrong and since they know that Jennifer is doing the cover of VF they are just assuming that she will discuss personal issues which they are wrong to assume," Huvane wrote in an email to the Times.

Aniston has not spoken publicly about her split since March, when she filed for divorce from Pitt.

Meanwhile, Pitt and Jolie have gone to great lengths to avoid any "are you or aren't you?" lines of questioning from journalists ever since they were photographed together on a beach in Kenya back in April. Reporters who covered the promotional junket for Mr. and Mrs. Smith were even made to sign contracts agreeing not to ask either actor about any aspect of their personal lives.

Skeptics have claimed that the Brangelina brouhaha was merely a publicity stunt aimed on luring more moviegoers into buying a ticket to watch Pitt and Jolie play married assassins trying to off each other.

If so, it worked. Mr. and Mrs. Smith topped the box office last weekend, taking in $50.3 million over a three-day period.