Lunchbox director Ritesh Batra in talks to adapt The Sense of An Ending

The film, based on Julian Barnes story of a retired man looking back on an old friendship, is in advanced development with UK production outfit Origin Pictures and is also backed by BBC Films.

The adaptation has been scripted by Nick Payne.

Origin boss David Thompson said of the project: “We’ve been overwhelmed by offers and we are going to be making that this year.”

Also on Origin’s EFM slate is crime drama Silencers, scripted by Matt Greenhalgh and billed as “a thrilling story of a unit of young policemen who combat gun crime”.

Also backed by BBC Films, the drama is likely to shoot this year, directed by Otto Bathurst (Peaky Blinders).

Meanwhile, Origin’s Charles Dickens’ adaptation A Tale Of Two Cities, scripted by David Farr, is aiming for a 2016 shoot. BBC Films is also backing this one.

At the Berlin Film Festival (Feb 5-15), Origin Pictures’ Woman In Gold will receive its world premiere in official selection. It will be released by The Weinstein Company in the US and by Entertainment Film Distributors in the UK in early April.

The film has its origins in a BBC Imagine documentary, Stealing Klimt, telling the story of the struggle by 90-year-old Maria Altmann to recover five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis in 1938. Helen Mirren stars as Altmann.

Woman In Gold recently previewed in test screenings to a rapturous response in Pittsburgh. Origin is also planning “a big screening” in Altmann’s native city, Vienna.

Thompson added: “The Austrians have been very supportive even though it [the film] asks difficult questions about certain elements of Austrian society.”