Naomi Watts has been chosen to play screen icon Marilyn Monroe in a new biopic.

The King Kong star will tackle the lead role in Blonde, an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' imaginary Marilyn Monroe memoir which will be directed by Andrew Dominik, the moviemaker behind The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

The $20 million production will begin filming in January 2011, and Dominik is delighted to have found his Monroe.

He tells ScreenDaily.com, "Why is Marilyn Monroe the great female icon of the 20th Century? For men she is an object of sexual desire that is desperately in need of rescue. For women, she embodies all the injustices visited upon the feminine, a sister, a Cinderella, consigned to live among the ashes. I want to tell the story of Norma Jeane as a central figure in a fairytale; an orphan child lost in the woods of Hollywood, being consumed by that great icon of the twentieth century."

Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, died in 1962 at the age of 36 following a drug overdose.

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