Rachel Weisz is to star in a new “psychosexual drama” written by Jewish director Peter Morgan.
The London-born actress, who recently appeared in The Lovely Bones, will play the lead in the upcoming film 360.
The film will be a loose adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play Reigen and will reunite her with Fernando Meirelles, who directed her in the thriller The Constant Gardener.
Austrian Jewish dramatist Schnitzler is one of Vienna’s most famous sons. A novelist, playwright and a friend of Sigmund Freud, he died just before the Nazis banned and burned his works.
Reigen has been retold on screen a number of times.
Schnitzler, who died in 1931, faced antisemitic abuse and public outcry when Reigen was published.
A story about sex and class, it was banned in Germany and the author was labell ed a pornographer.
It was announced earlier in September that Mr Morgan, who wrote the script for The Queen, is working on the screenplay for a biopic about musician Freddie Mercury, starring Sacha Baron Cohen.
Ms Weisz, voted the woman that men would most like to marry in a poll in January, won a Laurence Olivier award this year for her performance as Blanche Dubois in a London production of A Streetcar Named Desire.