Emma Thompson is set to return to a starring role on the big screen with an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s 2014 novel The Children Act.

According to Deadline, the actor is in talks for the film, which will be directed by Richard Eyre, who hasn’t shot for the big screen since 2008’s The Other Man.

The Children Act follows Judge Fiona Maye, whose commitment to her often tricky cases sometimes strains her marriage. This is pushed to breaking point after she starts work trying to rule whether a 17-year-old with leukaemia should be forced to have potentially life-saving blood transfusions despite the procedure going against his religious beliefs.

Thompson has focused on supporting roles in recent years, including an acclaimed turn as Robert Carlyle’s boozy sex worker mother in The Legend of Barney Thompson and as Bradley Cooper’s psychiatrist in Burnt. She will shortly be seen as an obstetrician in Bridget Jones’s Baby, which she also wrote, and next year as an ageing hippy in Noah Baumbach’s new movie, Yeh Din Ka Kissa.