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Daniel Radcliffe is moving further away from his infamous role as Harry Potter as it is revealed he will play Olympic champion Lord Sebastian Coe in an upcoming biopic.
The film, which has been entitled Gold, will be based on former Times athletics correspondent Pat Butcher’s book The Perfect Distance.
It will focus on Coe’s athletics career before the 1980 Moscow Olympic games as well as his rivalry with fellow athlete Steve Ovett.
The script is being adapted for the big screen by Oscar-winner Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) and Will Davies (How to Train Your Dragon) with the project being overseen by BBC Films and the BFI.
The film will see the Harry Potter star re-united with The Woman in Black director James Watkins.
On the film, Beaufoy said: “It’s a huge responsibility writing about people who are alive. It’s the thing about writing that keeps me awake at night, dramatising real life events with real people.
“You’ve got to get this right because they’re still alive and it’s their life, but at the same time you have to shape this in a way a drama is shaped. You have to shift the pieces around a bit to make it work, which is tricky.”
Gold will begin shooting in the UK and Russia from April 2014.