The team behind Oscar-nominated The Queen will reunite for a project based on controversial 1970s English football manager Brian Clough, said producer Christine Langan, who recently joined BBC Films from Granada.

Stephen Frears will direct The Damned Utd, while Peter Morgan is currently writing the screenplay adapted from David Peace's novel of the same name. The story follows the tumultuous time in the 1970s when Clough managed Derby County and Leeds United.

Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair in The Queen, will star as the eccentric and controversial Clough. Langan, who will serve as one of the producers on the film, says that the story is 'incredibly compelling and rather dark A Yorkshire noir that really goes beyond the football.' The project could shoot at the end of 2007.

Also, Langan hopes that Frears, Morgan and Sheen will reunite for the final part of the 'trilogy' started by 2003 TV project The Deal about Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, and continued by The Queen. 'It's early days, but it would explore the special relationship between the US and the UK,' she says. 'We have to see if Peter can find the right story.'

BBC Films has also optioned Philippa Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance, with the hopes that Scarlett Johansson-starring The Other Boleyn Girl, now in post-production could lead to a mini-franchise.

Other projects in the works at BBC Films include Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestseller We Need To Talk About Kevin. '[Ramsay] is keen to maintain the mystery of the relationships, it 's less about the violence,' Langan says.

Langan also plans to re-team with Pierrepoint director Adrian Shergold and writer Jeff Pope to make a poignant drama about 'the fattest man in Britain'.

BBC Films is also backing new talents such as Bullet Boy director Saul Dibb, who is working on his second draft of Disobedience, and London To Brighton director Paul Andrew Williams, who is writing a comedy about elderly people.

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