While on tour promoting “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” Steven Spielberg told German magazine FOCUS, he plans to put his attention on a huge project about President Lincoln and the Civil War. Filming could start early next year.

However, Spielberg plans to shoot “Tintin” in early fall first. It looks like back-to-back projects.

Keep in mind that the director has another project in the wings as well. He been prepping the Aaron Sorkin-scripted “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” but, according to Variety, that became sketchy after he could not get rewrites during the writer’s strike. Spielberg had enlisted Sacha Baron Cohen and talked to other high profile actors about starring in a drama about the trial of anti-Vietnam war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That film will have to wait.

The Lincoln project looks like a sure thing after “Tintin” and could be ready for an early 2009 shoot because of several variables: Spielberg has proved adept at shooting back-to-back films, which he did most memorably when he made “Jurassic Park” and the Oscar-winning “Schindler’s List” in 1993. Also, his Lincoln project — informed by the biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Uniter: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln” — has a strong script by “Angels in America” playwright Tony Kushner (who rewrote “Munich” for Spielberg).

Spielberg also has Liam Neeson –who played Oskar Schindler — ready to play Lincoln. Neeson agreed more than three years ago to play the role for Spielberg, and has been waiting for a start date.

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