Anthony Hopkins, famous for skinning the innocent in “Silence of the Lambs”, is in talks to front the serial killer flick “Solace”. If the title sounds familiar that’s because it was originally designed as a sequel to the 1995 beautie “Se7en”.

The project has been rewritten, and Morgan Freeman’s cop character replaced with Anthony Hopkins’ psychic doctor. Which is funny, because that’s how the project started – with a future-seeing doc.

David Fincher, director of the Brad Pitt/Freeman/Head-in-a-box classic, refused to get involved in a sequel to “Se7en”, but New Line carried on without him – - for a while. In 2002 they snapped up “Solace”, a spec script by “Ocean’s 11″ scribe Ted Griffin, which tells of a former doctor with psychic abilities who works for the FBI and is drawn into a unique serial killer case that pits him against a ”formidable foe”. The film was rewritten as a “Se7en 2″ with the doctor becoming Morgan Freeman’s Somerset character from the earlier film.

For one reason or another, the film didn’t happen – - well, not the incarnation of it anyway.

So now it’s “Solace” – and there’s no Morgan Freeman, just Tony Hopkins as the new character John Clancy.

Peter Morgan (“Frost/Nixon”) wrote the most recent draft of the script; Contrafilm partners Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson are producing the elevated genre pic, while Matthias Emcke and Thomas Augsberger (“Mr. Brooks”) will exec produce. No director attached as yet.

Guessing a “Se7en” sequel without Fincher would’ve sucked anyway, right? This is probably better..