The Weinstein Co will produce produce $20m love story,Alec & May - the US-set story ofthe Scottish inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell.

The project, developed by the UK's Headline Pictures,follows the romance between Bell, then a 28-year-old teacher and a 16-year-olddeaf girl.

"The telephone was the direct consequence of theirrelationship," says screenwriter Kevin Hood.

The project has already been partially backed by BBCFilms and Scottish Screen.

Filming is expected to begin in late 2006, early2007.

Alec & May isone of a number of projects in advanced development at Headline Picture, run byHood, Stewart Mackinnon and Mark Shivas.

Also pushing ahead is Sarah Gavron's 1940s-set EndlessSteppe, based on the best-selling American autobiography byEsther Hautzig.

The UK Film Council has invested in the developmentof what will be Gavron's follow upto, again being scripted by Hood.

Meanwhile, Headline has a number of TV projects thatcould conceivably be seen theatrically outside the UK.

Among these is The Translator, about the 1986 Reykjavik Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev thathastened the end of the Cold War.

The project is supported by the BBC and HBO.

The company has also secured private investment aswell as an investment from the National Endowment for Science, Technology andthe Arts (NESTA).