Dame Helen Mirren to star in remake of Brighton Rock

The movie, directed by Rowan Joffe, transposes the action from the 1930s to 1964 and sets it amid the south coast clashes between Mods and Rockers.

Richard Attenborough won huge acclaim playing the vicious, razor-wielding teenage gangster Pinkie in the 1947 film of the 1939 novel, and the role will be reprised by Sam Riley, who played Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in Control.

The film also stars Andrea Riseborough - nominated for a Bafta for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in BBC drama The Long Walk To Finchley - as Rose, the young waitress seduced by Pinkie when she stumbles on evidence linking him and his gang to a murder.

Oscar-winner Mirren will play Ida Arnold, who doggedly pursues Pinkie through the Brighton underworld, and Postlethwaite her friend Phil Corkery.

The film will the big screen debut for Joffe, whose TV drama The Shooting Of Thomas Hurndall won two Baftas earlier this year.

He said: "We're making Brighton Rock as contemporary as we possibly can because the story feels 'modern'. It's too alive, too vibrant and too relevant to be contained in the late thirties.

"Any form of adaptation is corruption. And Greene - who lovingly and pragmatically corrupted much of his own work to fit the big screen - would have been the first to understand that."

As well as putting the film in the context of the Mods and Rockers battles, the 1964 setting also places the action in the last year in which capital punishment was actively carried out in England.

Christine Langan, creative director of BBC Films, which is backing the project, said: "Rowan's adaptation is a very powerful piece of writing.

"The confidence of his work to date, the brilliant cast he has assembled and the strength of the team behind him, make Brighton Rock a truly exciting debut feature and one which BBC Films is very happy to support."

Shooting on the film is due to start on location in Brighton and London in October.