"The Twilight Saga" and Cosmopolis star Robert Pattinson is joining Naomi Watts in Werner Herzog's indie Queen of the Desert, the biopic of English writer Getrude Bell.

Variety says that the film "will chronicle Bell's life as a writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer and political attache for the British Empire. One of the first women to graduate from Oxford at the turn of the 20th century, she traveled through the Middle East, defining the borders of Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

Pattinson will play T.E. Lawrence, a British Army officer whose writing earned him fame as Lawrence of Arabia, on whom David Lean's classic film is based.

Cassian Elwes and Nick Raslan will produce the film, which starts production in late fall.

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