Jennifer Lawrence has landed a role in the new adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Lawrence will be teaming up with her "Hunger Games" director Gary Ross for the upcoming film.
"Set in California's Salinas Valley prior to World War I, the novel told of two families over the course of two generations, loosely alluding to the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel," the magazine reports. "The book was famously adapted as a 1955 James Dean movie directed by Elia Kazan. That movie focused on the second half of Steinbeck's book and on the second generation."
Deadline.com reports the American novel will be split into two films. Lawrence will reportedly play Cathy Ames, "the cold and cruel mother of the boys and estranged wife of the farmer."
For those who have, according to the Martha Heasly Cox Center For Steinbeck Studies website (part of San Jose State University):
"Cathy, one of Steinbeck's most interesting and controversial characters, is born with what the author describes as "a malformed soul" in a small Massachusetts town (71). From early on, people are both taken and betrayed by her innocent face. She often makes people feel uneasy, though they would not be able to say why.
"She learns at a young age how to use her sexuality to manipulate people and is a very clever liar. She is the cause of the whipping of two fourteen-year-old boys and the apparent suicide of one of her school teachers. As a teenager, she murders her parents by setting the family's home on fire while they slept. Though her body was never found, she too is presumed dead."
Lawrence is currently in Atlanta, GA. filming the third installment of the "Hunger Games" series, "Mockingjay: Part 1." The second film of the franchise "Catching Fire" will be released on Nov. 22.
