Gemma Arterton is going to have a crowd of hot beaux panting after her in her next film.

The actors Dominic Cooper and Luke Evans are just two of the men in the life of Tamara Drewe, the character to be played by Gemma in the eponymous film, which Stephen Frears begins filming in the early autumn.

Tamara Drewe was created by illustrator and writer Posy Simmonds and she based her characters on – and followed the same storyline as – Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd.

Dominic, who was in Mamma Mia!, The Duchess and the highly-praised recent TV drama Freefall, is in negotiations to play flashy bad-boy rock band drummer Ben, while Luke will play Andy Cobb, a character Simmonds based on Hardy’s Gabriel Oak.

Luke has also been cast as Apollo in Clash Of The Titans and has shot two other movies in recent months – Nottingham and Sex, Drugs And Rock And Roll (he was also in Piaf at the Donmar).

‘We’ve found our Alan Bates,’ one studio executive involved with Tamara Drewe told me, referring to the role Bates played in John Schlesinger’s 1967 movie of Far From The Madding Crowd.

Gemma is well versed in Hardy, having played Tess of the D’Urbervilles on TV. Ruby Films and BBC Films are making the picture and they’re also hoping to cast Tamsin Greig, Roger Allam and John Turturro in major roles.

Source: Mail Online