Portman and Fassbender for Macbeth

Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman are to star in the forthcoming screen adaptation of 'Macbeth'.

Fassbender will play the titular Thane of Cawdor, and Portman his scheming wife, Lady Macbeth.

[Related story: Pic emerges of Fassbender as Frank Sidebottom]

The film is to be directed by Justin Kurzel, the Australian helmsman who came to prominence with the disturbing 'Snowtown' in 2011, based on the Snowtown murders which took place over nearly a decade in southern Australia.

Rather than placing the action in the present day, as with recent Shakespeare adaptations including Ralph Fiennes' 'Coriolanus' and Joss Whedon's 'Much Ado About Nothing', it will instead be set in the 11th century and penned by Jacob Koskoff and Todd Louiso.

According to reports, the production will be 'a visceral approach to the story including significant battle scenes'.

The pair have already worked together on Terrence Malick's forthcoming, so-far unnamed film on the music scene in Austin, Texas.

They also very nearly worked together for a second time on 'Jane Got A Gun', the western which Fassbender dropped out of, followed soon after by its director Lynne Ramsay who quit the production on the first day of principle photography.

Portman will next be seen in the multiplexes reprising her role of astrophysicist Jane Foster in 'Thor: The Dark World'.