Keira Knightley is now officially attached to the role of Eliza Doolittle in the new film adaptation of the Lerner and Lowe stage musical ‘My Fair Lady.’

The Daily Telegraph’s Mandrake column reports that the 24-year-old British actress has beaten American competitor Scarlett Johansson to the part. Other sources are reporting that she is taking singing lessons and working on her cockney accent. Joe Wright is attached to direct and Daniel Craig has been mentioned as a potential Henry Higgins.

The remake talk began a couple of years ago with Daniel Day Lewis tipped for Higgins and Danny Boyle said to be considering taking the director’s chair.

Boyle didn’t work out and Higgins is still not formally cast. But director Joe Wright has the time now that he has been forced to abandon nine months work on ‘Indian Summer,’ the Cate Blanchett starrer about the last days of colonial rule in India. Budget concerns combined with pressure from the Indian government to play down the alleged affair between the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the countess Edna Mountbatten finally did the project in. Wright directed Keira Knightley in ‘Pride and Prejudice.’

Knightley was always attached to ‘My Fair Lady’ but then, in August of this year, Mandrake reported that she would have to compete with Johansson for the role. Now it seems that has all been settled.

Emma Thompson, who adapted Jane Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’ for the screen, will write the script. 

Knightley will apparently sing in the role, unlike Audrey Hepburn, who famously portrayed the Cockney flower seller in the 1964 classic ‘My Fair Lady,’ alongside Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins. Hepburn’s voice was substituted with that of Marni Nixon. As this was widely reported by the press, many consider it the reason Hepburn was overlooked that year at the Academy Awards, while the film was nominated for 12 and won eight.

There was a battle for the role of Eliza even back then. Julie Andrews, who had played the part on Broadway, with Harrison as Higgins, was the choice of screenwriter Alan Jay Lerner but Jack Warner of Warner Brothers insisted on having box office-star Hepburn, as Andrews was an unknown quantity on screen. Andrews went on to star in ‘Mary Poppins,’ also in 1964, naturally doing her own singing, and won an Academy Award for the part. Elizabeth Taylor is also rumoured to have fought for the role of Eliza.

(Photo by PR Photos)