Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell are to star in an unearthed Stanley Kubrick film. The script for Lunatic At Large, about a former carnival worker with anger problems and the beautiful girl he seduces in a tavern, was discovered several years ago.

Production Weekly said Scarlett and Sam, who appear together in superhero blockbuster Iron Man 2, have signed up for the film. Kubrick's son-in-law Philip Hobbs unearthed the treatment in 1999 in notes and files left by the filmmaker.

The late director was set to begin shooting the film in the early 1960s but instead directed the Roman epic Spartacus. The film Lunatic At Large will be based on the story written by the legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey director and the pulp fiction writer Jim Thompson, with whom he also collaborated on The Killing and Paths Of Glory.