The Working Title Films company has started the filming of the screen version of Lev Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" book. Famous Hollywood actors Kira Knightley and Jude Law are to play the main roles.

        The film's director is Joe Wright, who had already worked together with the Working Title Films on "Pride and Prejudice", "Atonement" and "The Soloist" films. The scenarist is an Oscar-winning writer Tom Stoppard (Brazil, Shakespeare in Love).

      There is the third work of Kira Knightley with Joe Wright, as she played main roles in "Anonement" and "Pride and Prejudice". In a new British adaptation of the Lev Tolstoy's book she will play Anna, a married woman who has an affair with a younger soldier. Jude Law has landed the role of her husband, Aleksei Karenin, and Aaron Johnson (Nowhere Boy) will play Count Vronsky, Anna's lover. 

      Rounding out the cast will be Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire), Matthew Macfadyen (Pride & Prejudice), Domhnall Gleeson (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Alicia Vikander (The Seventh Son), two-time Academy Award nominee Emily Watson, Olivia Williams (Hanna), and Ruth Wilson (Luther).

      The new film creators described the original late-19th-century Russian novel as a brilliant setting which "powerfully explores the capacity for love that surges through the human heart, from the passion between adulterers to the bond between a mother and her children."(Focus Features)

      The film's production will be held in UK and Russia. It is planned to show the première in cinemas in 2012.

      Earlier there have been several film versions of Tolstoy's classic novel, including adaptations starring Vivien Leigh (1948) and Greta Garbo (1927 and 1935). In 1997, the Warner Bros. company made another screen version with French actress Sophie Marceau and Britain's Sean Bean, as Anna's lover Vronsky. A British television adaptation, starring Helen McCrory and Kevin McKidd, was shown on Channel 4 in 2000.

      The latest Russian screen version of the immortal novel is a Sergei Solovyev's film starring Russian actress Elena Drubich, which issued in 2009. 

Sources: KP Lenta.ru BBC Focus Features

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