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Liev Schreiber will star in a movie adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel “Across the River and Into the Trees.”

Tribune Pictures and The Exchange announced the project Monday and said production is planned to start in Venice, Italy, and the Veneto region under Covid-19 guidelines next month. “Across the River and Into the Trees” has the support of the Italian tax credit and will be introduced to buyers through The Exchange at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Virtual market, which opens Sept. 10.

Schreiber will portray Colonel Richard Cantwell, a character partially based on Hemingway’s friend Colonel Charles T. Lanham. In the novel, published in 1950, Cantwell is duck hunting in Northern Italy during the closing days of World War II and dealing with a star-crossed romance with a much younger woman, having been damaged both physically and mentally during World War I and trying to come to terms with his own mortality.

Exclusive: Spotlight and Ray Donovan star Liev Schreiber is attached to lead cast on the feature adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s Venice-set novel, Across The River And Into The Trees.

Also aboard to star are emerging Italian actress Matilda De Angelis (The Prize), Laura Morante (Cherry On The Cake), Javier Camara (Truman) and Oscar-nominated Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini (Seven Beauties).

Six-time Golden Globe nominee Schreiber will play Colonel Richard Cantwell, Hemingway’s semi-autobiographical lead character who is an American officer serving in Italy right after World War II, facing up to the news of his terminal illness with stoic disregard. Determined to spend his weekend in quiet solitude, he commandeers a military driver to facilitate a simple duck hunting trip and a visit to his old haunts in Venice. As his plans begin to unravel, a chance encounter with a young countess begins to kindle in him the hope of renewal.