Several weeks after a triumphant premiere at Sundance, Kristen Stewart is reportedly lining up her next drama—a fascinating project that would put the César-winning actress at the center of the most famous literary hoax in recent memory. The drama will tackle J.T. Leroy, the fictional male author who managed to dupe the literary, Hollywood, and fashion scenes for about a decade.

Helena Bonham Carter and James Franco are also circling roles in the behind-the-scenes retelling of the bizarre hoax, according to The Hollywood Reporter. For those unfamiliar with the stranger-than-fiction story, a 17-year-old transgender novelist named J.T. Leroy shocked the literary scene in 1997 with graphic autobiographical tales of the disturbing physical and sexual abuse he suffered, detailed in several books. An elusive figure, Leroy made occasional public appearances in Hollywood—befriending Carrie Fisher and, over e-mail, Madonna—and scored movie deals before it was discovered that Leroy was actual the fictional creation of Laura Albert, a middle-aged writer who had invented the character and written his books, and Savannah Knoop, a twentysomething aspiring clothes designer who made public appearances as Leroy in a wig, sunglasses, and whisper-y voice.

Vulture further reports that Stewart is considering the role of Savannah Knoop—the character who posed publicly as the fictional transgender author—with Carter eye-ing the role of J.T. Leroy mastermind Laura Albert. Franco would complete the trio by playing Geoffrey Knoop—Laura’s beau and Savannah’s older brother.

The biopic, which follows a critically-acclaimed Sundance documentary on the subject, will be based on the memoir and life rights of Savannah Kroop, and directed by Justin Kelly, who directed Franco in 2015’s I Am Michael.

In 2008, Vanity Fair published an investigative feature on the ruse, “The Boy Who Cried Author,” during which writer Bruce Handy detailed the dark and twisted mythology Albert had created about Leroy.

Back in his teens, [Leroy] had achieved cultish notoriety for his autobiographical fiction, which drew on a childhood marred by horrific physical and sexual abuse—most famously stints working in truck stops in his native West Virginia as an under-age transvestite prostitute, side by side with his drug-addicted mother. [..] The truck-stop liaisons were only the most lurid episode in his past. He had had his first sexual experience at the age of five or six. He had been raped and regularly beaten. He eventually became addicted to heroin and at the age of 13 ended up living on the streets in San Francisco, working as a hustler. He was H.I.V.-positive. He cut himself. He burned himself. He associated love with brutality and exploitation, could only feel human connection through physical pain. It was a life story that read like an encyclopedia of the myriad ways children can be victimized by adults. But in a culture that fetishizes suffering and consumes memoirs of abuse as a form of off-the-rack therapy, it was a life story that also had commercial potential.

To read the complete feature, now available online, click here.