Sweden's Stellan Skarsgard has joined the cast of Lars von Trier's new feature film Dogville which will be shot in English with mostly US and UK actors.

Von Trier recently completed a $313,000 (DKr2.5m) test for the project in Zentropa's studios in Filmbyen outside Copenhagen, which according to producer Vibeke Windeloev was designed to prove if the director's innovative ideas are possible.

"The script is amazing," Windeloev said, "but we have to have it translated before we start talking about names for the major parts." Other von Trier regulars David Morse, Siobhan Fallon and Katrin Cartlidge are also expected to be included in the cast.

As with von Trier's Dancer In The Dark, Dogville is set in the US and is a psychological drama, this time taking place in a small mountain village. "It is natural for the story to take place in the US, and all of Lars' references are American anyway," Windeloev said.

Windeloev added that the film will not feature any exteriors or special effects, and is to be entirely filmed on a soundstage, thus throwing emphasis on the acting, lighting and sound: "That is what we are going to test, not only the HDTV equipment. We need to know if the whole set-up works. If it doesn't Lars will change it. So even though this is the most expensive test ever for us, it is still better than shooting the whole film, and then finding out it doesn't work."

The film's budget is estimated at around $3.8m (DKr30m), of which a large part is understood to be coming from the Nordic Film Institutes. If everything goes to plan, Dogville is set to shoot from May in Sweden's Trollhattan studios for about six weeks.