Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Daisy Ridley is in talks to play Ophelia in a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the perspective of the prince of Denmark’s tragic admirer, reports Variety.

Oscar-nominee Naomi Watts is named to play Queen Gertrude in the film, which is an adaptation of Lisa Klein’s young adult novel. Shakespeare’s original text will be discarded, but the new version will retain the original’s late middle ages setting.

Australian director Claire McCarthy, best known for 2009 adoption drama The Waiting City, is taking charge of the cameras.

Klein’s novel imagines an Ophelia who does not die in a stream, and is secretly married to Hamlet. In a 2006 review for The Guardian, critic Adèle Geras noted that the love affair between Ophelia and Hamlet is the backbone of the novel. “There are too many clichés, and a plodding weight to the prose, but this won’t stop readers revelling in a fascinating sidelight on Hamlet,” she wrote.

Ridley recent signed up to star in fantasy thriller Kolma for her The Force Awakens producer JJ Abrams. Watts is due to play a single mother who decides to put her son’s ambitious rescue plan into action in the drama The Book of Henry for Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow.

• This article was amended on Thursday 5 May 2016. We mistakenly referred to Naomi Watts as an Oscar winner. This has been corrected.