Ben Affleck will direct and star in Witness for the Prosecution, a new adaptation of the Agatha Christie short story on which Billy Wilder’s six-time Oscar-nominated 1957 thriller was based.

Affleck will presumably play the central character, a lawyer who is called to defend a man accused of the murder of a wealthy older woman, who bequeathed him her wealth without realising he was already married. In Wilder’s version, the lawyer was played by Charles Laughton, while Tyrone Power was the defendant and Marlene Dietrich played the suspect’s wife.

It will be Affleck’s first directing gig since Argo, which won the 2013 Oscar for best picture. He is currently between bat flicks, after providing a cameo as Batman in Suicide Squad and agreeing to co-write and direct the next standalone Batman film.

The Witness for the Prosecution remake comes at a time when Hollywood has gone crazy for Christie. Emma Stone and Alicia Vikander are reportedly lining up rival biopics of the crime writer, while Kenneth Branagh has – after a number of false starts – finally got his remake of Murder on the Orient Express out of the station.