Paul Haggis is set to direct Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron in In The Valley of Elah, his directorial follow-up to his Academy Award-winning hit Crash.

Production Weekly writes that the story is based on an investigative article by Mark Boal in Playboy titled "Death and Dishonor," which told the true story about an officer-father who rejected the Army's claim of AWOL status for his son and discovered a murder.

Jones will play a former MP and Vietnam veteran Hank Deerfield, whose son Mike mysteriously goes AWOL, shortly after returning to the U.S. from the front lines in Iraq. Theron will play Detective Emily Sanders, a homicide investigator based in Fort Rudd, who helps him get to the bottom of the soldier's disappearance.

Haggis will direct from his original screenplay.

Principle photography is scheduled to begin the first week of December on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Morocco.