Damian O'Donnell the director of FilmFour's excellent East is East has signed up for his first project since winning enormous critical acclaim for his debut comedy.

Heartlands, a romantic road movie again set in the North, stars Kate Beckinsale's other half Michael Sheen as a lovesick husband desperately trying to win back his unfaithful wife.

Taken from Paul (A Room For Romeo Brass, Twenty Four Seven) Fraser's script the $3.5m production shoots in September. O'Donnell, whose debut took $10m at the box office in 1999 has signed up for Heartlands and breaks period of limbo brought on after he walked away from the immigrant underworld thriller, Dirty, Pretty Things, which Stephen Frears is now directing.