Nick Cassavetes ("The Notebook") has signed on to direct Film Department's period love story "The Beautiful and the Damned" says The Hollywood Reporter.

the Film Department's period love story about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayme. The helmer already has circled his Zelda: Keira Knightley is in discussions to play the tempestuous lover.

"Damned" revolves around Zelda Sayre (Knightley) and author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who became Jazz Age icons known for living large, soaring high and crashing hard. Although toasts of town in the 1920s, their courtship and marriage was festooned with jealousy and acrimony.

Fitzgerald used their relationship as material for his novels, and Sayre -- who tried hard to find an artistic identity of her own and ended up being admitted to a sanitarium -- did the same.

Hanna Weg wrote the screenplay. Shooting is scheduled to begin in April.

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