AceShowbiz -

Making a follow-up to its acquisition of "The Eighth Wonder", Universal Pictures will develop one more dramatic feature under its wings entitled "Suite Francaise" based on Irene Nemirovsky's 2004 novel of the same title.

In bringing up the project to the surface, the company has already assigned "The Pianist" writer Ronald Harwood to pen the script with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall serving as producers. The story itself is the tale about the occupation of France by German troops that takes place in 1940 and involves a romance between a French woman and a German soldier.

Written by Nemirovsky shortly before she was sent to Auschwitz, where she passed away, the book initially was thought to be a diary by her elder daughter who kept it for fifty years. The true self of the novel was not revealed until the woman was about to donate it to a French archive in the late 1990s.