The project, which is being pre-sold at the AFM by Ealing Metro International from their new headquarters in the Loews Hotel’s fitness studio, follows the real-life love affair between this beautiful young woman, trapped in a “loveless,” unconsummated marriage to Brit art critic John Ruskin, and his protege, pre-Raphelite painter John Everett Millais. Knightley stars as a woman in the middle of another mentor-protege triangle in David Cronenberg’s upcoming A Dangerous Method (November 23), between Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender).

The film is based on a script by Aleksandra Crapanzano. The producers are Barnaby Thompson (Easy Virtue), Lucia Seabra (The Last Summer of La Boyita), Maria Teresa Arida (Arbitrage) and Lauren Versel (Vamps). The project is part of Ealing Metro’s AFM slate which also includes the musical romantic comedy Goddess and The Account, an action thriller to be directed by Pete Travis.

A second film on the subject, written by Emma Thompson and her husband Greg Wise, was being sold at the market last year and was due to go into production mid-October with Dakota Fanning playing Effie. Some buyers were shown that promo at the AFM this year on an iPad.

Gray was born in Scotland and lived in Bowerswell, the house where Ruskin’s grandfather had killed himself. She was acquainted with Ruskin’s family from a young age. Ruskin wrote the fantasy novel, The King of Golden River for her when she was only twelve years old. Although he is said to have idolized her from a young age, he failed to consummate his marriage to her. The famous Victorian love triangle has been dramatized a number of times. Thompson’s project was held up by the fact that a playwright claimed that her script copied his play. Ealing is currently completing casting on the film.

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Lorene Scafaria, who scripted Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist, wrote the screenplay and will direct. The film begins shooting May 16.

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If last year’s Oscar-winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button excised almost all trace of F Scott Fitzgerald’s short story from the final cut, fans of the celebrated author may find solace fin reports that his final novel now looks set to get the big-screen treatment.

Keira Knightley and Matt Damon are in talks to star in a new version of Tender Is the Night, according to the Padiba blog. Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel was previously filmed in 1962 with Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones as the rich but troubled couple Dick and Nicole Diver. It is set on the French Riveria, where the doctor and his wife live a seemingly idyllic existence that masks the dark heart of their relationship. The book was listed at No 28 on the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library in 1998.

Messud’s tome follows three Brown College graduates in their late 20s looking ahead to their lives with no little trepidation. The story takes place a few months before and then a few months after 9/11 in New York.

Knightley would likely play Marina Thwaite, the beautiful daughter of a social activist and journalist who is struggling to finish her first book, titled The Emperor’s Children Have No Clothes (you says the title, you wins the prize), while Bana is most suited for Ludovic, an ambitious Aussie who woos Marina to get himself invited into Manhattan’s high society. No idea yet which role Gere’s down for.

Although strongly linked with the role (she had singing lessons and sang for Mackintosh), Keira was never officially offered the part. She is believed to have felt that the project was taking too long to get off the ground.