Oscar-winner Mark Rylance has been cast as the lead in feature film adaptation of JM Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the "Ready Player One" star was rumoured to be attached to the project but has officially joined it now.

The novel, penned in 1980 by the Nobel laureate, tells the story of a magistrate (Rylance) of "the Empire" who is working in a tiny frontier town, doing his best to ignore an inevitable war with the so-called "barbarians." After he witnesses the cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war, he reconsiders his role in the regime and carries out a quixotic act of rebellion.