The Weinstein Company has snapped up the film rights to August: Osage County, a darkly comedic, Pulitzer and Tony-winning stage play which begins an eight-week run in London, at the National Theatre, from November 21.

Harvey Weinstein will produce the film, along with Jean Doumanian and Steve Traxler, and has tapped up the play’s author, Tracy Letts, to write the adaptation.

She’ll have a heck of a job – August: Osage County is a three-hour plus epic about the reunion of a dysfunctional family that features drug abuse, suicide, and incest, amongst other things.

But Weinstein clearly has great belief in the project, and in Letts. "I've loved the writing since I was given a 240-page script for a three-hour play that starred nobody, that had no workshop," he told Variety. "My reaction was similar to the feeling I had when I read Quentin Tarantino's script for True Romance. Tracy has that kind of voice."

Weinstein, who is an investor in the stage play, hopes to have the film version in cinemas by 2011.