The film will be co-produced by Emmy-winning and Tony-nominated actor James Gandolfini (God of Carnage, "The Sopranos"), who has tried to film the project for six years. Phillip Kaufman will direct the project, which is scheduled to begin filming next year in Northern California. Barbara Turner and Jerry Stahl will write the screenplay, which is based on the love affair and five-year marriage of novelist Ernest Hemingway and writer and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, in a relationship that takes them from a bar in Key West to the Spanish Civil War.

Kidman, who will soon appear in the film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole, appeared on Broadway in The Blue Room. She received an Oscar for playing another mid-20th-century literary icon, Virginia Woolf, in "The Hours." Other film credits include "Nine," "Australia," "The Golden Compass," "Happy Feet," "Birth," "Cold Mountain," "Moulin Rouge," "Eyes Wide Shut," "Portrait of a Lady" and "To Die For."

Owen received an Oscar nod for the film version of Closer, a play in which he appeared (in a different role) in London. A veteran of London's Old Vic theatre company, his other screen credits include "Duplicity," "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," "Children of Men," "The Bourne Identity," "Gosford Park," "The Hire," "Second Sight," "Bent," "Close My Eyes" and "Lorna Doone."