We Own the Night director James Gray has signed on to direct The Lost City of Z for Paramount, and is adapting the David Grann book with Brad Pitt in mind to star as British soldier and spy Percy Fawcett, according to Variety.

The nonfiction book by Grann, a staffer at the New Yorker, will be published in April by Doubleday. Paramount acquired it earlier this year for Pitt to produce through his Par-based Plan B banner.

Fawcett left Victorian society to explore in the Amazon, and he became obsessed by the idea of an advanced civilization he called Z, which he believed existed in the depths of the jungle. Along with his son, Fawcett headed into the jungle in 1925 in search of Z and was never seen again.

"This is a terrific opportunity to do something entirely different for me," Gray said. "It is a story that will be told with an epic scale, with a main character who is larger than life."

No production date has been set.