It’s official: Atonement director Joe Wright and star Keira Knightley are reteaming for Anna Karenina, the Working Title films adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel that was written by Tom Stoppard. The film will be distributed by Focus Features in the U.S. and Universal Pictures International worldwide sometime in the second half of 2012. Working Title co-chairs Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are producing with Paul Webster; the trio were 2008 Oscar nominees as producers of Atonement.

Knightley will star as Anna, Jude Law will play her husband Aleksei Karenin, and Aaron Johnson (Nowhere Boy) will play Count Vronsky. Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Emily Watson, Olivia Williams and Ruth Wilson also have been cast in the story of a woman making her way in early-19th-century Russian high society. It’s familiar territory for Wright, who directed the period adaptations Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, also for Working Title and Focus; he also directed The Soloist for Working Title and UPI and most recently Hanna for Focus.