ScreenDaily reports that Robert Pattinson and Nicole Kidman have signed on to star in the UK production, Bel Ami. Renowned UK theatre directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod are co-directing a film for the first time, stepping outside of their acclaimed Cheek By Jowl theater company, considered one of the most influential in the world.

Bel Ami will tell the story of Guy De Maupassant (Pattinson), a 19th-century French writer, and his “erotically charged story of ambition, power and seduction.” London-based Protagonist will take on international sales for the film.

Pattinson is of course, a rising star through his teen-friendly fantasy pics beginning with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and presumably ending with the conclusion of the Twilight saga. Other detours into more sophisticated realms of drama (Little Ashes) have been less kind to the London-born 23-year old actor. I suspect this will be a make-or-break kind of role for the kid in terms of how he is going to evolve from his current heartthrob status.

Kidman, meanwhile, who was recently tapped to play the first true-life transsexual in Tomas Alfredson’s The Danish Girl, will tackle comparatively slight material here as a presumable object of desire for Pattinson’s Guy De Maupassant.

Bel Ami is scheduled to begin filming in London and Budapest in February 2010.