Spanish actor Luis Tosar has joined the cast of Brazilian director Andrucha Waddington's historical biopic Lope De Vega about the Spanish playwright and poet.

Tosar will play Frey Bernadino De Sahagun, a Franciscan missionary who wrote the first encyclopedia of the new world and The General History of New Things Of Spain in the 16th Century.

Daniel Bruehl (Goodbye Lenin, The Bourne Ultimatum) plays Lope De Vega, who was famous for his romantic comedies written and performed in the Golden Age of theatre.

'The film has been in development for a few years and will focus on Lope De Vega's early life when he first became an artist and gets involved in a romantic relationship,' Tosar told ScreenDaily.

Jordi Gasull and Ignacio Del Moral have written the script for the $16m Brazilian-Spanish project, which is set to begin shooting next month in Spain with Antena 3 Films, Ikiru, El Toro Films and Brazil's Conspiracao producing. Post production work will be performed in Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

Tosar recently starred alongside Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Gael Garcia Bernal in Jim Jarmusch's criminal thriller The Limits Of Control, which shot entirely in Spain, and is set to star in Iciar Bollain's forthcoming film Even The Rain, which will shoot in Bolivia and Mexico this summer.

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