March 18, 2009 | 4:18 pm

Are Pitt and Portman hooking up?

Posted by Danielle Berrin

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Love! Food! Sotheby’s auctions? That’s the basic premise of a soon-to-be film starring Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman, who championed the project.

The rights to the fresh-off-the-presses book, “Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry” by Leanne Shapton were purchased by Paramount at an auction last night; though it sounds like Portman has had her eye on the project for some time.

The P&P pair will of course play lovers; she, a NY Times food writer and he, an accomplished photographer. Their relationship is revealed through estate-artifact backstories that tell the story of their wild, passionate and heart wrenching romance.

And this is where I refuse to say anything about Angelina holding on to her honey. Period.

Variety reports:

Paramount Pictures has attached Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman to star in a film based on the new Leanne Shapton book “Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry.” The book was just published by Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Paramount won an auction for the book rights Tuesday night, with Pitt’s Plan B producing with Portman’s Handsomecharlie Films banner. Portman brought the book to Pitt, whose company is Par-based.

The book takes the form of Sotheby’s-like estate auction catalog, with 325 entries and photographs depicting items that reveal the private moments and the rise and fall of a four-year relationship between the fictitious couple Hal Morris (a 40ish photographer) and Lenore Doolan, (a New York Times food columnist in her late 20s).
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Shapton, an illustrator and art director of the NYT’s Op-Ed page, uses items that range from clothes to notes, e-mails and heirlooms to convey the excitement, the hopes and dreams, and ultimately the heartache of a love affair that runs its course.

CAA brokered the deal.

Pitt, who’ll next be seen starring in the Quentin Tarantino-directed “Inglourious Basterds” and the Terence Malick-directed “The Tree of Life,” is expected to next star in the Steven Soderbergh-directed “Moneyball.” It’s the latest high-profile lit buy for his Plan B, which has James Gray writing to direct an adaptation of the just-published David Grann book “The Lost City of Z.” Earlier this week, Par acquired the John Le Carre novel “The Night Manager” for Pitt to produce.

Portman will next be seen in the Jim Sheridan-directed drama “Brothers.”