Michael Kuhn’s Qwerty Films has boarded Bill Condon’s Kinsey which is set to start shooting on July 28. Qwerty will produce and finance the film which stars Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, with Fox Searchlight Pictures taking rights in North America, UK, Italy and Latin America.

Kuhn closed a ten-picture distribution deal with 20th Century Fox in June 2001 which has already seen partnerships on The Order starring Heath Ledger and (with Searchlight) on David O Russell’s star-studded I Love Huckabee’s with Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg, Dustin Hoffman and Isabelle Huppert.

Kinsey is the story of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and marks the second film from Condon as a director after Gods And Monsters in 1998for which Condon won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. Condon was also nominated last year for his adapted screenplay of Chicago.

He wrote the screenplay, working with producer Gail Mutrux who took the film to LA independent Myriad Pictures. Myriad originally set it up with American Zoetrope and United Artists as part of their co-production alliance, but, when that fell apart, Myriad took it to Searchlight.

Myriad will retain remaining territorial sales rights and company president Kirk D’Amico is acting as executive producer on the film.

Kinsey was a brilliant scientist who abandoned his career in 1940 to focus on a sex research project which yielded the sensational 1948 bestseller ‘Sexual Behavior In The Human Male’ and a follow-up on the human female in 1953. Kinsey was also bisexual and he, his wife and many of his followers experimented with the sexual practices they researched.