Nicolas Cage and John Cusack are boarding the Alaska-set thriller The Frozen Ground, about the investigation of notorious serial killer Robert Hansen.

In the thriller, Nicolas Cage will portray the Alaska State Trooper who cracked the case. John Cusack is in talks to play Hansen, who murdered as many as 21 women.

New Zealand's Scott Walker wrote and will direct the feature, marking his directorial debut.

Robert Hansen, a respected family man, systematically abducted some two dozen women and flew them into the Alaskan wilderness where he released and then hunted them down. The story will follow a trooper who finds one of Hansen's victims alive on the street who becomes the key in an unlikely partnership that brings Hansen to justice.

Hansen was arrested in 1983 and charged with four murders and, as part of a plea bargain, agreed to show police where the graves of the murdered women were. He was sentenced to 461 years in prison and is currently imprisoned at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Alaska.

Production is set to start October 10 in Anchorage.