Fox Searchlight Pictures,DNA Films and BBC Films are partnering up on an adaptation of Alan Bennett'sOlivier Award winning coming-of-age play The History Boys.

The project is set to beginfilming in the UK in July and will reunite the play's director Nicholas Hytnerwith key cast members including Richard Griffiths, Clive Merrison, Frances dela Tour, and Stephen Campbell Moore.

Set in 1980 in the earlydays of the Margaret Thatcher regime, The History Boys charts the fortunes of eight students at a NorthEngland public school as they attempt to get into university under the guidanceof two vastly different teachers.

Hytner, who previouslycollaborated with Bennett on The Madness Of King George, is serving as producer with Kevin Loader and DamianJones.

DNA and the BBC willco-finance and Fox Searchlight will distribute the project. Fox Searchlight'sexecutive vice president of production Claudia Lewis will oversee productionfor the studio.

Fox Searchlight executivevice president Joseph De Marco negotiated the deal with BBC Films' head ofrights and commercial affairs Jane Wright, DNA's head of business and legalaffairs Jo Smith, Miles Ketley and Charles Moore of Wiggin & Co, andAnthony Jones of PFD.

"We are eager to see theenormously successful new work of Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner'scollaborative genius translated from stage to screen," Fox Filmed Entertainmentchairman Tom Rothman, who was instrumental in bringing the project to thestudio, said.