Actress Rachel Weisz has been lined up to star in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestselling novel The Lovely Bones, according to Variety.
The British Oscar-winner will play the grieving mother of a 14-year-old girl who is raped and murdered.
Published in 2002, Sebold's novel is written from the girl's perspective as she looks down from heaven.
Jackson, who will direct from his own script, said it was the challenge of adapting the work that excited him.
"You think, on one hand, wow, this would be an amazing movie," he is quoted as saying.
'Incredibly difficult'
"Your second thought is how incredibly difficult it would be to make it into a film."
Weisz, 36, won the best supporting actress Oscar in 2006 for The Constant Gardener and was recently seen in science-fiction romance The Fountain.
Last year she gave birth to her first child, a boy, with film director Darren Aronofsky.
The Lovely Bones will be produced by Hollywood studio Dreamworks in association with Film Four.
Production is set to begin in October.
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