Peter O’Toole plans his feature directing debut...

Peter O’Toole plans his feature directing debut with Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock,” the tale of a Dublin family whose life is changed by the prospect of money. O’Toole also will re-create his London stage role of Capt. “Paycock” Boyle. Filming is planned for early 1989, with Vanessa Redgrave considering the part of long-suffering wife Juno . . . . Albert Brooks will be a triple threat (writer-director-actor) in an untitled film for the Geffen Co. It squelches rumors that he was to do “Comeback Kid,” based upon Avery Corman’s “50” for director Mark Rydell.

Henry Thomas gets his first grown-up role as a young man out to avenge the drug death of his sister in “13,” an independent production to film in Toronto next month for first-time director Raffi Shart. Also cast: Nastassja Kinski and Peter Fonda as a drug czar . . .

Inventors and scientists haven’t exactly been screen de rigeur, but following Francis Coppola’s “Tucker,” on an automobile designer, there’s “Fat Man and Little Boy,” the story of the development of the atomic bomb. Bruce Robinson (“Killing Fields”) wrote the script on the Manhattan Project. It goes before the cameras in September for director Roland Jaffe in Mexico. . . . And casting further back in time is producer Dodi Fayed, who’s reteamed his “Chariots of Fire” team--director Hugh Hudson and writer Colin Welland--to make “Rocket,” about the invention of the steam locomotive.