Scarlett Johansson is making the jump from the big screen screen to the small when she stars in an adaptation of novelist Edith Wharton's The Custom of Country.

Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson will star in The Custom Of Country.

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This will be the first major television role for the Avengers actress, who will also be acting as executive producer. The series will consist of eight episodes and is likely to be broadcast on a premium cable network, according to Deadline

Johansson will play the social climbing Undine Spragg who attempts to rise to the upper echelons of New York society.  The ambitious Undine marries into an impoverished but established New York family but soon finds she is dissatisfied as her husband is unable to keep her in the manner she so desires. A number of affairs and husbands later, Undine soon realises there are some things she cannot overcome and, although she seemingly has everything she desires, her status as a divorcee prevents her from rising yet further. 

Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfieffer starred in an adaptation of another Wharton book, Age of Innocence.

The screenwriter of such films as Atonement and Dangerous Liaisons, Christopher Hampton, is working on the script which has been adapted from his earlier screenplay written some twenty years ago. 

Wharton is one of the most successful American novelists of the early 20th Century. Her novels have been adapted for the screen on countless occasions including the 1993 adaptation of Age of Innocence, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfieffer and Winona Ryder. Another of Wharton's works, The House of Mirth, was successfully adapted into a 2000 film starring Gillian Anderson

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Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson starred in a 2000 adaptation of House of Mirth.