EXCLUSIVE: Alicia Vikander in talks to join period love story Ali and Nino, adapted by Oscar-winner Christopher Hampton.

A Royal Affair star Alicia Vikander is in talks to join love story Ali and Nino.

As previously announced, Christopher Hampton’s script, currently in early stages, has Asif Kapadia on board to direct. Kris Thykier-produces for PeaPie, while IM Global handles sales. Leyla Aliyeva is executive producer.

The novel source material, written under the pseudonym Kurban Said and first published in German in 1937, is set against the historical backdrop of the First World War on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution and the beginnings of the Soviet Union.

It tells the love story of Ali Khan Shirvanshir, the male descendant of a royal Muslim family and Nino Kipiani, a beautiful, Christian, Georgian princess.

The production is aiming for a 2014 shoot.

Rising star Vikander most recently starred in Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate, Sergei Bodrov’s Seventh Son and Julius Avery’s Son of a Gun

Kapadia won BAFTAs for 2010 doc Senna and his first feature, The Warrior.

Hampton won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 1988 for Dangerous Liasons and went on to write Atonement and A Dangerous Method among others.