Robert Pattinson has signed on to star in the Werner Herzog film Queen of the Desert, playing a young T.E. Lawrence opposite Naomi Watts.

Variety’s Jeff Sneider broke the news, writing:

Pic will chronicle [English writer Gertrude] Bell’s life as a writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer and political attache for the British Empire. One of the first women to graduate from Oxford at the turn of the 20th century, she traveled through the Middle East, defining the borders of Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Pattinson is attached to play T.E. Lawrence, a British Army officer whose writing earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, on whom David Lean’s classic 1962 epic is based. Lawrence was a good friend to Bell over the years, as the duo helped establish the Hashemite dynasties in Jordan and Iraq.

Oscar-nominated director Werner Herzog is directing the film, which has Rescue Dawn collaborators Cassian Elwes and Nick Raslan producing. The film is eyeing a production start this Fall, after Pattinson’s Cosmopolis is released. Are you interested?