Julia Roberts is negotiating to star in Daniel Isn't Talking based on the novel by Marti Leimbach, for Fox 2000. Karen Rosenfelt is producing.

Variety says Stephen Chbosky (Rent) is adapting Leimbach's London-set novel about a couple and their two children. When it's revealed that the son is autistic, the family's orderly life is shattered.

Roberts starred in a previous adaptation of a Leimbach book, Dying Young, in 1991.

Autism is a subject of passion for Roberts, who recently optioned the film rights to Cammie McGovern's book "Eye Contact," about a mother and her autistic son.