Viola Davis to star in Steve McQueen's heist thriller Widows

Viola Davis has paired up with 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen for the film-maker’s forthcoming heist thriller Widows.

Based on the 1983 British miniseries of the same name, from Prime Suspect’s Lynda La Plante, the adaptation will boast a screenplay from Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn, who is co-writing the film with McQueen.

Like the show, the film will center on four armed robbers who get killed in a failed heist attempt, leaving their widows to finish the job using their husbands’ notebooks as guidance. Davis will probably play one of the widows, although Variety, the outlet that broke the news, hasn’t confirmed her role.

Widows marks McQueen’s first film since winning the best picture Oscar for 12 Years a Slave in 2014. The slavery drama won an additional two Oscars, for best supporting actress (Lupita Nyong’o) and best adapted screenplay (John Ridley).

McQueen is said to have completed the pilot for Codes of Conduct, an HBO series about a black man rising through high society in New York. That project, set to star Devon Terrell, Helena Bonham Carter and Rebecca Hall, has, however, been put on the back burner, per Variety, to allow McQueen to place all of his focus on Widows.

Jennifer Lawrence is rumored to have been approached to co-star alongside Davis but was forced to pass due to scheduling conflicts.

McQueen, meanwhile, says he also has plans to shoot a film about the black American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson. The biopic is described as a dream project for the British director: “His life and legacy was the film I wanted to make the second after Hunger, but I didn’t have the power, I didn’t have the juice.”

Davis most recently starred in the summer hit Suicide Squad. She can also be seen in the current third season of ABC’s show How to Get Away With Murder. Next up for the Emmy winner is Denzel Washington’s Oscar-tipped drama Fences, out this winter.