Billy Ray has signed on to write and direct an English-language version of the Argentinian thriller The Secret in Their Eyes for Warner Bros., which is negotiating the rights.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Juan José Campanella's 2009 murder mystery, adapted from the novel by Eduardo Sacheri, won the foreign language Oscar in March. The film follows a retired criminal investigator in 2000 Buenos Aires who is writing a novel to try and deal with an unresolved rape and murder from 1974 that still haunts him. In the process, he re-encounters a female judge with whom he has a long, equally unresolved, history.

Billy Ray will set The Secret in Their Eyes in the United States in present day.

"I want to try to make the movie that Anthony Minghella would have made from this material. Or Alan Pakula," says Ray. "I know that's setting the bar high, but it's the only reason to take something like this on. I am beyond excited about it, feeling truly privileged that a studio would take a shot on this kind of material."

No production date has been set.