Marion Cotillard has been chosen to bring some Gallic glamour to one of Scotland's most malevolent (fictional) characters in the latest big screen adaption of William Shakespeare's MacBeth. The Oscar-winning actress is set to star along German/Irish actor Michael Fassbender, who will be taking on the titular role, under the direction of Snowtown's Justin Kurzel, The Hollywood Reporter first revealed.

Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard will replace fellow Oscar-winner Natalie Portman in the latest adaption of 'The Scottish Play'

Distributed through StudioCanal and Film4, the latest rendition of the classic Shakespearean tragedy is being produced by The King's Speech backers Iain Canning and Emile Sherman, who run the production house See Saw. Which happens to be the same company that worked on the Fassbender-starring Shame. No further details of the film have been released just yet, so it is still unknown who Cotillard and Fassbender will be starring alongside when filming begins in January 2014.

Michael Fassbender
Fassbender will hopefully make a great MacBeth

The appointment of Cotillard over Portman apparently came down to Portman's prior filming commitments, with the Black Swan star lined up to star in the western Jane Got A Gun and the Terrence Malick project Knight of Cups, both of which are due to begin filming next year (IMDb). Cotillard's schedule on the other hand was much clearer than Portman's prior to her appointment, with her only upcoming film in the coming months being the Belgian/French film Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night) and the animated The Little Prince, both of which she is currently filming (IMDb). Besides this, the appointment of Cotillard, an actress who has successfully played an evil, conniving woman in previous films, seems like the more appropriate choice out of the two anyway.

The latest film adaption comes almost in tandem with the current MacBeth craze sweeping theatre floorboards on London's West End and New York City's Broadway. Sir Kenneth Branagh has recently appeared as the doomed Scottish king on stage in England and will take his version of the play over to the States next year, whilst James McAvoy has also starred in the Scottish play in a recent West End production that began earlier this year.

Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Branagh starred on stage as MacBeth recently, and will take his show to the US soon