Academy Award winning actress Rachel Weisz is currently in talks to join the period drama The Light Between Oceans, DreamWorks’ adaptation of M.L. Stedman’s novel.  Director Derek Cianfrance is already set up to helm the adaptation with Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender and Alicia Wikander (Anna Karenina) signed on as a leads.  Heyday Films’ David Heyman (Gravity) and Jeffrey Clifford (Up in the Air) will produce the project.

The drama revolves around a lighthouse keeper (Fassbender) and his wife (Wikander) who live off the coast of a Western Australian island during World War I.  The couple sights a boat carrying a young baby girl and a dead body and decide to raise the child of their own.  The film explores the consequences and morality of this action, with Weisz figuring into a greater mystery.  She’s in talks to play the mother of little girl.  While steeped in a period and setting that is sharply different from the films Cianfrance has already made, the central story and themes, on the surface, feel akin to the acclaimed body of work the director has already put into stark focus in last springs’ A Place Beyond the Pines and his breakthrough feature, 2010’s Blue Valentine, both of which starred Ryan Gosling.

Weisz was last seen on screens in the 2013 blockbuster Oz: The Great & Powerful and will next be featured in the buzzy sci/fi romance The Lobster from director Giorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth).  She is also currently filming The Early Years, a new drama from Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty).  The Light Between Oceans is being eyed for a shoot sometime later this year in Australia and perhaps being plotted for a potential 2015 awards run.