Gemma Arterton is to play pop singer Dusty Springfield in a new film about her life, which Phyllis Nagy will direct. Nagy, whose screenplay for Carol was nominated for an Oscar in 2016, will also take up writing duties for this project, which will be produced by Number 9 Films, the team behind Carol.

The film, So Much Love, will be set in 1968, when at the peak of her popularity, the singer travelled to Tennessee to record the album Dusty in Memphis. An official synopsis says:

It will follow her as she navigates her way through the politics of the recording studio and the city, and will also explore her encounter with the music of Motown, her stand against apartheid policies during her aborted South African tour and her thorny brushes with men in the music industry.

Filming will take place in the UK and US early next year, and the film will likely be premiered in autumn 2019.

Arterton, who has previously worked with Number 9 on Their Finest and Byzantium, and recently got rave reviews for her performance as a depressed mother in The Escape, said:

I have been an admirer of Dusty Springfield since I was a teenager: her effortless husky voice, the way she conveyed emotion through music, how she helped bring Motown to the UK. Dusty was ahead of her time in many ways and inspired so many future artists. She was generous, witty, mercurial, shy, extroverted and a true English eccentric. I simply cannot wait to play her.

Nagy described Springfield as “an innovative, brilliant artist and a complex, contradictory woman”. Born in Enfield in 1939, Springfield was a 60s icon whose hits included I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself and Son of a Preacher Man. Springfield’s career was later blighted by alcoholism and self-harm, but she remained a critical and commercial force to be reckoned with in later collaborations with the likes of the Pet Shop Boys.