According to Variety, Jeremy Thomas' Hanway Films is handling international sales for Goya's Ghosts, the long-in-the-works biopic to be directed by Milos Forman and produced by Saul Zaentz. Javier Bardem and Natalie Portman are reportedly in talks to star.

Veteran French scribe Jean-Claude Carriere ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being") has written the screenplay about the most prolific period in the life of the late 18th century Spanish artist Francisco de Goya.

The story unspools against the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Shooting is scheduled to start this September in Spain.

This will be the third collaboration between Forman and Zaentz, following the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus.