by Michael Fleming

NEW YORK Single Cell, the production partnership between R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe and Sandy Stern responsible for "Being John Malkovich," is turning up its volume of film production, making a movie deal for Douglas Coupland's upcoming novel, "All Families Are Psychotic" and prepping an MTV sitcom about the world of a Stipe-like rock star.

To be published in September by Bloomsbury Press, the Cape Canaveral-set "All Families Are Psychotic" chronicles a family get-together the weekend before the first female astronaut is launched into space.

Single Cell's other pic projects include "The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint," which is out to directors; "Saved," a black comedy about a girl who finds her pregnancy makes her an outcast at a Baptist high school, out to cast; and "Blonde," written and to be directed by Everett Lewis that, Stern says, "takes the Bonnie and Clyde story and shows another side of them, the one that was into kinky sex." Peter Sarsgaard is attached to play Clyde.