Academy Award-nominated English actress Keira Knightley has allegedly set her eyes on the lead role in the My Fair Lady remake prepped by Columbia Pictures. Variety reports that the project is being produced by Duncan Kenworthy and Cameron Mackintosh. CBS Films will co-produce and Sony will distribute the movie which will maintain the original 1912 setting.

Filming will take place, as much as possible, on the streets of London and not on Hollywood sets as was the case with the successful 1964 Warner Bros. incarnation of Alan Jay Lerner's book. In addition, elements from George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" will be inserted in the screen adaptation.

Kenworthy told Variety that the production team is confident they will do justice to both Shaw and Lerner. However, the problem with remakes is that they are always compared with the original incarnation. In this case, the 1964 masterpiece by George Cukor and starring Audrey Hepburn as flower girl Eliza Doolittle is tough to beat. That movie benefited from the outstanding performance of Rex Harrison who also played Professor Higgins in the Broadway musical.

Here comes into play Cameron Mackintosh, who produced many of the West End's and Broadway's most successful musicals, including "Cats," "Les Miserables" and "The Phantom of the Opera." His role in producing the next big screen My Fair Lady will be crucial, as he already produced two stage revivals of the musical.

Keira last played in The Duchess, which is a film based on Amanda Foreman's biography of the scandalous, 18th-century English aristocrat Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire due to be released in September this year. Her last notable performance was in Atonement, a 2007 film adaptation of Ian McEwan's critically acclaimed novel of the same name and directed by Joe Wright. The movie snatched numerous nominations and wins, including an Oscar and two Golden Globes, including the one for Best Motion Picture Drama.

Keira Knightley is widely believed to be anorexic although Knightley rejected such allegations.