Tabloid rumors predict Gemma Arterton to be cast as comic strip hero Tamara Drewe

Gemma Arterton reportedly cast as title character in movie adaptation of Posy Simmonds's comic strip about a beautiful columnist who ruffles feathers in a rural writers' retreat - explains the Guardian.

Tamara Drewe, Posy Simmonds's comic strip about a journalist who ruffles feathers in a rural writers' retreat, is to be turned into a film by Stephen Frears.

The director of The Queen and The Grifters is reported to have cast former Bond girl and St Trinian's graduate Gemma Arterton as the title character, a newspaper columnist whose recent nose job transforms her into a seductive flirt, to the chagrin of the quiet village's womenfolk. Tamsin Greig and Roger Allam are also said to be attached to the project.

Simmonds's strip ran in the Guardian's Review section between September 2005 and October 2007 before being collected in a graphic novel. The tragicomic story was inspired by a piece of classic fiction – Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd; likewise her earlier serialised cartoon, Gemma Bovery, took Flaubert's Madame Bovary as its template.

Frears' most recent project was also based on a popular work of French literature: Colette's Chéri novels, which he turned into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Friend.

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