According to Deadline, Helen Mirren is set to star as celebrated author Patricia Highsmith in new movie Switzerland, whose plot will mirror one of the Tom Ripley novels for which the American novelist was most famous. Filmmaker and celebrated music video director Anton Corbijn, whose credits include Control, A Most Wanted Man and The American, is aboard to direct the movie, which FilmNation will be launching for world sales at next week’s EFM. In Switzerland, Highsmith’s late life solitude in the Swiss Alps is interrupted by Edward, a young literary agent who is sent by the writer’s relentless publishing company to convince her to pen one last novel in her wildly popular Ripley series (which includes the classic The Talented Mr Ripley). Highsmith uses her famously macabre imagination to scare Edward away, but before they know it a collaboration ensues, leaving the world they’ve constructed indistinguishable from their own. Filming is due to take place this year in Europe with additional casting underway. Dubbed the “poet of apprehension”, American scribe Highsmith is best known for her psychological thrillers including the Ripley novels, Strangers On A Train and The Price Of Salt, which became Carol on screen. Her work has been adapted dozens of times for screen.