Here's a movie that may sound familiar. It depicts how Truman Capote wrote his famous 1960s book "In Cold Blood," about the gruesome murders of a Kansas farm family, and ended up unable to finish another work.

No, it's not the acclaimed "Capote," for which Philip Seymour Hoffman just snared a Best Actor nomination. Instead, it's "Infamous," a movie due out this fall in which the iconoclastic author is played by little-known British actor Toby Jones, accompanied by a star cast including Sandra Bullock as author Harper Lee.

How did two movies covering the same 40-year-old literary saga end up being made about the same time? It's a tale of two camps working independently, each plowing ahead apparently unconcerned that a nearly identical rival project was in the works. Now, the critical success of "Capote" and its Academy Award potential raises big questions about how "Infamous" will fare.

"How many Truman Capote movies does one want?" asks Andrew Karsch, a movie producer who was going to help finance "Infamous" but wasn't able to reach a deal with Warner Independent Pictures, which produced and will distribute the film. He calls Mr. Hoffman's acting "a definitive performance."

Douglas McGrath, who wrote and directed "Infamous," says he has been fascinated with Mr. Capote ever since he watched him on "The Dick Cavett Show" in the early 1980s. Mr. McGrath, who received an Oscar nomination for co-writing Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway," had composed 40 pages of a script about Capote before putting it aside to write the screenplay for 2002's "Nicholas Nickleby." Then, in 2003, he returned to writing "Infamous," relying in part on George Plimpton's 1997 biography of Capote.

Mr. McGrath didn't find out there was another Capote script until he had finished writing "Infamous" and was chatting with an executive from United Artists. The executive said he had Mr. McGrath's script on his desk. "I don't think so," Mr. McGrath says he replied. In fact, it was the rival Capote script.

Mr. McGrath says he didn't pay it much attention. Warner Independent Pictures had committed to his movie right away, and financing was secure. Production on "Infamous," budgeted at $13 million, began in February last year, several months after production on "Capote" had wrapped up.

"What I would have despaired over was if I had not been able to make the film," says Mr. McGrath. He says he never read the script for "Capote," nor has he seen the film because it would be "all too emotional."

He says he's unsure what the success of "Capote" -- which this week was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture -- will mean for "Infamous." "I don't know if it will widen the audience, or lessen the audience," he says.

Warner Independent executives involved in the movie point to differences between the films that they can emphasize in marketing. "Infamous," for instance, dwells more on Capote's high-toned New York social circle. And it focuses more on humorous scenes in which straight-laced Kansans gawk and react to the flamboyant and unabashedly gay cosmopolitan writer in their midst. Moreover, "Infamous" packs more star power: In addition to Ms. Bullock's portrayal of Ms. Lee, the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird," the cast includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels.

Dueling movie projects usually are like a game of chicken, with one of the parties eventually giving up. A few years ago, "Moulin Rouge!" director Baz Luhrmann and Twentieth Century Fox were developing a movie about Alexander the Great, but backed off once director Oliver Stone barreled ahead with his own "Alexander." Miramax's commitment to "Frida," the biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo starring Salma Hayek, prompted United Artists to abandon a similar project it was developing with Jennifer Lopez.

Before "Infamous" began production, "Capote" was almost finished. That movie got its start several years ago when actor Dan Futterman -- he had a recurring role on the TV series "Judging Amy" -- became fascinated by the writer after reading Gerald Clarke's 1988 book "Capote: A Biography." Although Mr. Futterman had never written a screenplay, he persuaded a high-school classmate, documentary filmmaker Bennett Miller, to join him in the project, even though they soon learned of the similar "Infamous." When Mr. Hoffman was shown the "Capote" script, he signed on immediately to the project.

The team struggled to raise financing, but United Artists liked the idea enough -- even though the studio was aware of the competing project -- that in 2003 it agreed to make the movie. The $7 million-budget film was shot in just 36 days in Canada, wrapping up in late 2004. "Capote" was screened at the Toronto Film Festival last September and immediately generated Oscar buzz.

Mark Gill, president of Warner Independent, says he had been emboldened to go ahead with "Infamous" in part because he and others knew about the rival film's early financing problems and it was uncertain whether "Capote" would go into production.

Among the first actors Warner Independent approached to play its Capote was Sean Penn, says Mr. Gill, but a deal was never struck. A spokeswoman for Mr. Penn says he never committed to the picture. Mr. Jones was cast from among 14 actors who screen-tested for the role. (The studio won't say who else tried out.) The most commercially successful work by Mr. Jones has been as the voice of Dobby the House Elf in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets."

Even if "Infamous" performs disappointingly at theaters, Warner Independent expects to cover about 70 percent of the movie's budget through the sale of foreign-distribution rights. That means that even though the film cost about twice as much to make as "Capote," the studio has mitigated its risk.

Still, it will be the second movie out in about a year on the subject of "In Cold Blood," a topic with narrow appeal. But Mr. Gill doesn't seem worried. He cites two recent Warner Independent releases that were considered risky bets: "Good Night, and Good Luck," a black-and-white movie about journalist Edward R. Murrow, and "The March of the Penguins," about the lives of emperor penguins in Antarctica. Both have done well.

"Almost all the movies I've succeeded with have been counterintuitive," he says.

THE UNITED STATES Naval Academy is known as one of the most difficult colleges in the country to get into, right up there with Ivy League schools -- but not quite as difficult as the marketing department at Walt Disney would have us believe.

Posters for "Annapolis," a drama about the struggles of a cadet out to prove himself at the academy, which opened last weekend to a lackluster $7.7 million at the box office, proclaim: "50,000 Apply. 1,200 Are Accepted. Only the Best Survive." Fifty thousand applications? Even Harvard had a mere 22,796 applicants for this fall's freshman class.

It turns out the Naval Academy received an average of 11,400 applicants per year for the past 10 years, says Naval Academy spokeswoman Judy Campbell. (About 1,200 are accepted annually.) So where does Disney get its 50,000 figure? "They pulled it from the screenplay," says a Disney spokesman, adding that "I think there was some classic Hollywood creative license taken here."

Seeing Double?

This isn't the first time the movie industry has released similar films at about the same time. Here are some other examples.

MOVIE/BOX OFFICE(1): Dangerous Liaisons $34.7
RELEASE DATE: Dec. 16, 1988
COMMENT: Based on classic "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," about aristocrats' seductions. Producer Norma Heyman learned from news article about rival project. Script was written (from play) in three weeks, she says.

MOVIE/BOX OFFICE(1): Valmont $1.1
RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 1989
COMMENT: From the same French novel. "We always thought the other film would fold," says "Valmont" producer Michael Hausman. "I'm glad I did it, but I feel sorry for my friends who helped finance it."

MOVIE/BOX OFFICE(1): Dante's Peak $67.2
RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 1997
COMMENT: Officials ignore warnings and volcano explodes. Filmmakers learned two-thirds of the way through shooting that a rival volcano movie was being made, says Ilona Herzberg, a producer. They responded by doubling production speed.

MOVIE/BOX OFFICE(1): Volcano $47.5
RELEASE DATE: April 25, 1997
COMMENT: Los Angeles officials disregard warnings that a volcano under city is about to explode. Producer Neal Moritz says his film's later debut hurt its box office: People "felt like they had already seen it."

MOVIE/BOX OFFICE(1): Deep Impact $140.5
RELEASE DATE: May 8, 1998
COMMENT: NASA team tries to stop comet hurtling toward Earth. Learning of a similar film in production, "we were shocked," says producer Richard Zanuck. But the filmmakers also knew "we had a lead time."

MOVIE/BOX OFFICE(1): Armageddon $201.6
RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1998
COMMENT: Deep-core drillers sent by NASA try to stop asteroid hurtling toward Earth. Jonathan Hensleigh, screenwriter and executive producer, says he and Disney thought projects differed enough: one more about stopping asteroid, the other on devastation on Earth.