Coogan to star in 'unfilmable' story

The British director Michael Winterbottom is attempting to film what has been described as one of the greatest but least filmable novels ever written in the English language.

Winterbottom has commissioned his longtime collaborator Frank Cottrell Boyce to turn the 18th century comic novel The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, into a screenplay, reports Weekly Variety.

Steve Coogan is lined up to play Shandy, the country parson whose autobiography the book purports to be, but whose digressions and shaggy-dog stories defy conventional plotting.

Just as Tristram Shandy is a book about a failed effort to write a book so the film would, on one level, be about trying to film the unfilmable, notes Variety.