Benedict Cumberbatch will lead Rogue Male adaptation

Geoffrey Household's 1939 novel Rogue Male is one of those books that has been through the adaptation process before, but keeps popping up on radars. The latest person ready to take a crack at it is Benedict Cumberbatch, who plans to star in and produce a new film.

The book is a survivalist thriller that follows a British sportsman and hunter who attempts to assassinate a dictator but is caught, tortured and left for dead. When he escapes back home to England, he must hide out in a harsh countryside with the enemy agents as well as the police in hot pursuit. Household intended for the dictator to represent a famous historical figure: "although the idea for Rogue Male germinated from my intense dislike of Hitler, I did not actually name him in the book as things were a bit tricky at the time and I thought I would leave it open so that the target could be either Hitler or Stalin," he told the Radio Times in the 1970s. "You could take your pick."

1941's film version Man Hunt plumped for Hitler and had Walter Pigeon and Joan Bennett starring for Fritz Lang. Since then, it has also been on the radio on both sides of the pond and was turned into a 1976 BBC TV movie with Peter O'Toole in the lead.

Cumberbatch's take will have Macbeth co-writer Michael Lesslie on script duty and Fox Searchlight is backing its development. “I am thrilled both as an actor and producer to be working on bringing this most treasured of English novels to the big screen,” Cumberbatch tells The Hollywood Reporter. The actor makes his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Doctor Strange, which arrives here on October 28, and has been busy filming the next series of Sherlock.