Guy Pearce is set to tackle the role of The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald opposite British actor Dominic West as Ernest Hemingway in new movie Genius.

Theatre director Michael Grandage will make his feature film debut with the big screen adaptation of A. Scott Berg's award-wining biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, about the relationship between American novelist Thomas Wolfe, played by Jude Law, and his editor Max Perkins, who will be portrayed by Colin Firth.

Now Iron Man 3 star Pearce and The Wire actor West have joined the line-up for the movie as Perkins' other famous writers.

The film will also feature Nicole Kidman as costume designer and writer Aline Bernstein, who was romantically linked to Wolfe in the 1920s, and Laura Linney as Perkins' wife, Louise.

Production on the project is due to begin in the U.K. next month (Oct14).

The period movie will reunite Grandage with Law, who starred in the theatre mogul's West End production of Henry V last year (13), and Pearce with Kidman, who co-star in forthcoming thriller Strangerland.