Aaron Sorkin, the creator of White House television series the West Wing, is planning to bring another political story to the big screen.

Mr Sorkin is set to film the story of the rise and fall of John Edwards, the Democrat presidential contender brought down when a gossip magazine revealed his extramarital affair with an aide.

It later emerged that Mr Edwards, whose wife Elizabeth has terminal cancer, had fathered a child with the woman and attempted to pass the baby off as someone else’s.

According to Variety magazine the screenwriter has brought the rights to a book about the scandal written by one of Mr Edwards’ former political associates.

The film will be Mr Sorkin’s directorial debut, but it is by no means the first time he has turned his attention to Washington politics.

In 2007 he wrote the film version of Charlie Wilson's War, the story of a controversial Texan congressman who funnelled money in the 1980s to the Afghanistan Taliban so they could fight Soviet troops.

The West Wing, which ran for seven seasons, followed the lives of senior White House staff, with one storyline featuring a politician whose ambitions were thwarted by a sex scandal.

Mr Sorkin’s next film, The Social Network, is released in October. It tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the teenage Jewish computing genius who created Facebook.