Keira Knightley signs up for The Talking Cure

Keira Knightley is to take the lead in David Cronenberg's first film in three years, reports the Playlist blog.

The Talking Cure, based on the Christopher Hampton play of the same name, will star Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, a Russian-Jewish psychiatric patient, who is said to have inspired some of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud's most remarkable discoveries. Christoph Waltz and Michael Fassbender – who both featured in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds – are set to co-star, with Waltz as Freud, and Fassbender as Jung.

Hampton's play focuses on the relationship between Spielrein and Jung, when he was treating her at the Burghölzli mental hospital near Zurich in 1904. Jung used Freudian techniques to try and overcome Spielrein's association of paternal punishment with physical arousal.

The unconfirmed Playlist report was triggered by a Facebook update by Australian distributor Hopscotch Films, suggesting that it had picked up rights to the film.

Reviewing Hampton's play in 2003, the Guardian's Michael Billington wrote: "In part, the play is intended as a tribute to a neglected pioneer. Freud and Jung have entered the history books. But part of Hampton's point is that Spielrein, a patient turned healer, was a highly formative influence. It is she who provokes the rupture between Freud and Jung which enabled the latter to venture deeper into the unconscious." He also rather presciently said, "There is something about its emphasis on narrative over drama that suggests the work's place is on the screen."